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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A MANUAL 






MORAL PHILOSOPHY 



DESIGNED FOR 



COLLEGES OD HIGH SCHOOLS. 



BY 



ANDREW P PEABODY, D.D., LL.D. 

PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



V 



cvO x 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copiee Receded 

JUL. 20 1901 

Copyright entry 

1 CLASS A^XXo. N». 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1873, by A. S. Barnes & Co. 
Copyright, 1901, by Mary R. Peabody. 



:^...?.:s. 



PREFACE. 

The author has endeavored in this treatise to com- 
prehend all that is essential in a manual of ethics, with 
a view equally to precision and to conciseness. He has 
not thought it necessary to controvert views other than 
his own; for conflicting opinions are apt to bewilder 
rather than to enlighten those who are not adepts in 
the science, and it is better to supersede false theories 
by the clear statement of the truth than to enter into 
their formal refutation. Thus, for instance, as regards 
utilitarianism, instead of exposing the fallacies of its 
several types, the attempt has been made (in Chapter III.) 
to set them aside by assigning to expediency its legiti- 
mate secondary place as a principle of action. 

Among the author's chief motives in the preparation 
of this manual has been his desire to give emphasis to 
his view of the ground of Eight, as consisting in intrin- 
sic fitness, independent of any will or arbitrary law 
human or divine, and essential as furnishing the only 
standard by which we can attain a knowledge of the 
Divine attributes. The ground of Right is the basis 
of Moral Philosophy, and must of necessity determine 
the validity and worth of the system built upon it. 

Next in importance to this is the classification of the 
virtues which constitute the Right. Here it is not suf- 
ficient to enumerate the prominent traits which enter 
into a good character. The division should be exhaust- 
ive, and in this treatise the four cardinal virtues are so 
defined as to embrace the whole of human duty, and so 



iv PREFACE. 

divided, it is believed, as to give its due place to every 
head of moral obligation. 

Another prominent aim in this book has been to pre- 
sent the Christian religion and morality in their true 
relations, as at once mutually independent, and in the 
most intimate and helpful alliance, inasmuch as Chris- 
tianity creates some classes of obligations, reveals others, 
intensifies all, and furnishes the only motive power that 
can insure their fulfilment. 

It is believed that such value as this book may have 
is enhanced by the chapters on the history of Moral 
Philosophy, especially as there is no compend of this 
history that is likely to fall into the hands of the stu- 
dent ; while it is of no little importance that he should 
have some acquaintance with the principal ethical 
theories of the ancient world, and that such names as 
Cud worth, Clarke, Butler, Price, Paley and Bentham 
should not remain wholly unknown. 

This book was originally prepared for the author's own 
classes, because, while acknowledging the great merits 
of other manuals, he found none that presented its 
range of subjects in what seemed to him their due per- 
spective and relations, and because some of them, 
otherwise excellent, lacked conciseness and comprehen- 
siveness. His use of the manual as a text-book for 
several years, and assurances received from experienced 
teachers in schools and colleges who have made use of 
it, have given him a confidence in its teaching power 
which he dared not to express or to feel when it first 
saw the light. 

Cambridge, January 17, 1884. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L 

PAGE 

Action 1 



CHAPTER IL 

The Springs of Action 10 

Section I. The Appetites . . . . . ,10 
Section II. The Desires .... li 

Section III. The Affections 28 

CHAPTER III. 
The Governing Principles op Action .... 30 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Right 35 

CHAPTER V. 

Means and Sources of Knowledge as to Right and 

Wrong 41 

Section I. Conscience . . 41 

Section II. Sources of Knowledge. 1. Observation, 

Experience, and Tradition 48 

Section III. Sources of Knowledge. 2. Law . 50 

8bction IV. Sources of Knowledge. 3. Christianity 55 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Rights and Obligations .... ... 61 

CHAPTER VIL 

Motive, Passion, and Habit . . 72 

CHAPTER Vm 

Virtue, and the Virtues . . ... 88 

CHAPTER IX 

Prudence ; or, Duties to One's Self .... 98 

Section I. Self-Preservation 99 

Section n. The Attainment of Knowledge . . 102 

Section III. Self-Control 106 

Section IV. Moral Self-Cnltnre 109 

CHAPTER X. 

Justice ; or, Duties to One's Fellow-Beings . . .118 

Section I. Duties to God 118 

Section II. Duties of the Family 118 

Section III. Veracity ... ... 122 

Section IV. Honesty ... ... 184 

Section V. Beneficence . . . . 143 

CHAPTER XI. 

Fortitude ; or, Duties wtth reference to unavoidable 

Evils and Sufferings 151 

Section I. Patience 152 

Section II. Submission 156 

Section III. Courage 158 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTER XIL 
Order ; or, Duties as to Objects under oub own Con- 

TKOX .164 

Section I. Time 165 

Section II. Place 168 

Section III. Measure 170 

Section IV. Manners 177 

Section V. Government .... 180 

CHAPTER Xm. 

Casuistry . 187 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Ancient History of Moral Philosophy 195 

CHAPTER XV. 

Modern History of Moral Philosophy . 207 



A MANUAL 

OF 

MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



CHAPTER 1. 

ACTION. 

A N act or action is a voluntary exercise of any 
^*- power of body or mind. The character of an 
action, whether good or bad, depends on the intention 
of the agent. Thus, if I mean to do my neighbor a 
kindness by any particular act, the action is kind, and 
therefore good, on my part, even though he derive 
ao benefit from it, or be injured by it. If I mean to 
do my neighbor an injury, the action is unkind, and 
therefore bad, though it do him no harm, or though 
it even result to his benefit. If I mean to perform 
an action, good or bad, and am prevented from per- 
forming it by some unforeseen hindrance, the act is 
as truly mine as if I had performed it. Words which 
have any meaning are actions. So are thoughts which 
we purposely call up, or retain in the mind. 

On the other hand, the actions which we are 
compelled to perform against our wishes, and the 
thoughts which are forced upon our minds, without 



2 MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 

our own consent, axe not our actions. This is obvi- 
ously true when our fellow-men forcibly compel us 
to do or to hear things which we do not wish to do 
or to hear. It is their action solely, and we have no 
more part in it than if we were brute beasts, or inani- 
mate objects. It is, then, the intention that gives 
character to the action. 

That we commonly do what we intend to do theie 
can be no doubt. We do not act under immediate 
compulsion. We are, therefore, free agents, or actors. 
But are our intentions free ? Is it in .our power to 
will otherwise than we will ? When we choose to 
perform an act that is just or kind, is it in our power 
to choose to perform an act of the opposite character ? 
In other words, is the will free ? If it be not so, then 
what we call our intentions are not ours, but are to 
be attributed to the superior will which has given 
direction to our wills. If God has so arranged the 
order of nature and the course of events as to force 
my will in certain directions, good or evil, then it is 
He that does the good or evil which I seem to do. 
On this supposition God is the only agent or actor in 
the universe. Evil, if it be wrought, is wrought by 
Him alone ; and if we cannot admit that the Supreme 
Being does evil, the only alternative is to deny the 
existence of evil, and to maintain that what we call 
evil bears an essential part in the production of good. 
For instance, if the horrible enormities imputed to 
Nero were utterly bad, the evil that was in them is 
chargeable, not on Nero, but on God ; or if it be 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 3 

maintained that God cannot do evil, then Nero was 
an instrument for the advancement of human happi- 
ness and well-being. 

What reasons have we for believing that the 
human will is free? 

1. We have the direct evidence of conscious- 
ness. We are distinctly conscious, not only of doing 
as we choose, but of exercising our free choice among 
different objects of desire, between immediate and 
future enjoyment, between good and evil. Now, 
though consciousness may sometimes deceive us, it is 
the strongest evidence that we can have ; we are so 
constituted that we cannot refuse our credence to it ; 
and our belief in it lies at the basis of all evidence 
and of all knowledge. 

2. We are clearly conscious of merit or demerit, 
of self-approval or self-condemnation, in consequence 
of our actions. If our wills were acted upon by a 
force beyond our control, we might congratulate or 
pity ourselves, but we could not praise or blame our- 
selves, for what we had done. 

3. We praise or blame others for their good or 
evil actions ; and in our conduct toward them we 
show that we believe them to have been not merely 
fortunate or unfortunate, but praiseworthy or blame- 
worthy. So far as we suppose their wills to have 
been influenced by circumstances beyond their con- 
trol, we regard them with diminished approval or 
censure. On the other hand, we give the highest 
praise to those who have chosen the good amidst 



4 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

strong temptations to evil, and bestow the severest 
censure on those who have done evil with virtuous sur- 
roundings and influences. Now our judgment of others 
must of necessity be derived from our own conscious- 
ness, and if we regard and treat them as freely will- 
ing beings, it can only be because we know that our 
owr. wills are free. 

These arguments, all derived from consciousness, 
can be directly met only by denying the validity 
of consciousness as a ground of belief. The opposing 
arguments are drawn from sources independent of 
consciousness. 

1. The most obvious objection to the freedom of 
the human will is derived from the power of mo- 
tives. It is said, We never act without a motive ; 
we always yield to the strongest motive ; and mo- 
tives are not of our own creation or choice, but are 
brought to bear upon us independently of our own 
action. There has been, from the creation until now, 
an unbroken series of causes and effects, and we can 
trace every human volition to some anterior cause or 
causes belonging to this inevitable series, so that, in 
order for the volition to have been other than it was, 
some member of this series must have been dis- 
placed. 

To this it may be answered : — 

(a) We are capable of acting without a mo- 
tive, and we do so act in numberless instances. It 
was a common saying among the Schoolmen, that an 
ass, at equal distances from two equal bundles of hay, 



POWER OF MOTIVES. 6 

would starve to death for lack of a motive to choose 
either. But have we any motive whatever in the 
many cases in which we choose — sometimes after the 
vain endeavor to discover a ground of preference — 
between two equally valuable, beautiful, or appetizing 
objects, between two equally pleasant routes to the 
same terminus, or between two equally agreeable 
modes of passing a leisure day or hour ? Yet this 
choice, made without motive, may be a fruitful cause 
of motives that shall have a large influence in the 
future. Thus, on the route which one chooses with- 
out any assignable reason, he may encounter persons 
or events that shall modify his whole plan of life. 
The instances are by no means few, in which the 
most decisive results have ensued upon a choice thus 
made entirely without motive. 

(6) Motives of equal strength act differently on 
different temperaments. The same motive, when it 
stands alone, with no opposing motive, has not the 
same effect on different minds. There is in the will 
of every human being a certain reluctance to action 
— in some greater, in others less — corresponding to 
the vis inertice in inanimate substances ; and as the 
impulse which will move a wooden ball may not suf- 
fice to move a leaden ball, so the motive which will 
start into action a quick and sensitive temperament, 
may produce no effect on a person of more sluggish 
nature. Thus, among men utterly destitute of hon- 
esty, some are tempted by the most paltry opportuni- 
ties for theft or fraud ; others, not one whit more 



6 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

scrupulous, have their cupidity aroused only by the 
prospect of some substantial gain. So, too, some sin- 
cerely benevolent persons are moved to charitable 
actions by the slightest needs and sufferings ; others, 
equally kind and generous, have their sympathies 
excited only on grave occasions and by imperative 
claims. Motives, then, have not a determinate and 
calculable strength, but a power which varies with 
the previous character of the person to whom they 
are addressed. Moreover, the greater or less suscep- 
tibility to motives from without is not a difference 
produced by education or surroundings ; for it may 
be traced in children from the earliest development of 
character. Nor can it be hereditary ; for it may be 
found among children of the same parents, and not 
infrequently between twins nurtured under precisely 
the same care, instruction, and discipline. 

(0) External motives are not the causes of 
action, but merely its occasions or opportunities. 
The cause of the action already exists in the charac- 
ter of the agent, before the motive presents itself. A 
purse of gold that may be stolen without detection is 
an irresistible motive to a thief, or to a person who, 
though not previously a thief, is covetous and unprin- 
cipled ; but the same purse might lie in the way of 
an honest man every day for a month, and it would 
not make him a thief. If I recognize the presence of 
a motive, I must perform some action, whether exte- 
rior or internal ; but whether that action will be in 
accordance with the motive, or in the opposite direo- 



POWER OF MOTIVES. 7 

fcion, is determined by my previous character and 
habits of action. 

(d) The objection which we are considering as- 
sumes, without sufficient reason, that the phenom- 
ena of human action are closely analogous to 
those of motion in the material world. The an- 
alogy fails in several particulars. No material object 
can act on itself and change its own nature, adapta- 
tions, or uses, without any external cause ; but the hu- 
man mind can act upon itself without any external 
cause, as in repentance, serious reflection, religious 
purposes and aims. Then again, if two or more 
forces in different directions act upon a material ob- 
ject, its motion is not in the direction of either, 01 
with the momentum derived from either, but in a di- 
rection and with a momentum resulting from the com- 
position of these forces ; whereas the human will, in 
the presence of two or more motives, pursues the 
direction and yields to the force of but one of those 
motives. We are not, then, authorized to reason 
about the power of motives from the action of mate- 
rial forces. 

(e) Were the arguments against the freedom of 
the will logically sound and unanswerable, they would 
be of no avail against the testimony of conscious- 
ness. Axioms, intuitive beliefs, and truths of con- 
sciousness can be neither proved nor disproved by 
reasoning ; and the reasoning by which they seem to 
be disproved only evinces that they are beyond the 
range and reach of argument. Thus it may be main- 



8 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

tained with show of reason that motion is impossible ; 
for an object cannot move where it is, and cannot 
move where it is not, — a dilemma which does not 
disprove the reality of motion, but simply indicates 
that the reality of motion, being an intuitive belief, 
neither needs nor admits logical proof. 

2. It is urged against the freedom of the human 
will that it is inconsistent with God's foreknowl- 
edge of future events, and thus represents the Su 
preme Being as not omniscient, and in that particular 
finite and imperfect. 

To this objection we reply : — 

(a) If human freedom and the Divine foreknowl- 
edge of human acts are mutually incompatible, we 
must still retain the freedom of the will as a truth 
of consciousness ; for if we discredit our own con- 
sciousness, we cannot trust even the act of the under- 
standing by which we set it aside, which act we know 
by the testimony of consciousness alone. 

(h) If the acts of a freely willing being cannot be 
foreknown, the ignorance of them does not detract 
from the perfeotness of the Supreme Being. Omnip- 
otence cannot make two and two five. Omnipotence 
cannot do what is intrinsically impossible. No more 
can Omniscience know what is intrinsically unknow- 
able. 

(c) If God's foreknowledge is entire, it must 
Include his own acts, no less than those of men. 
If his foreknowledge of men's acts is incompatible 
with their freedom, then his foreknowledge of his 



DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE 9 

own acts is incompatible with his own freedom,. We 
have, therefore, on the theory of necessity, instead of 
a Supreme Will on the throne of the universe, mere 
fate or destiny. This is equivalent to the denial of a 
personal God. 

(d) It cannot be proved that God's foreknow 1- 
edge and man's free will are incompatible with 
each other. The most that we can say is that we 
do not fully see how they are to be reconciled, which 
is the case with many pairs of undoubted truths that 
might be named. But while a perfect explanation of 
the harmony of the Divine foreknowledge and human 
freedom is beyond the scope of our faculties, we may 
explain it in part, from out own experience. Human 
foreknowledge extends very far and with a great de- 
gree of certainty, without abridging the freedom of 
those to whom it relates. When we can foresee out- 
ward events, we can often foretell, with little danger 
of mistake, the courses of conduct to which they will 
give rise. In view of the extent and accuracy of hu- 
man foresight, we cannot pronounce it impossible, 
that He who possesses antecedent knowledge of the 
native constitution of every human being, and of the 
shaping circumstances and influences to which each 
being is subjected, may foreknow men's acta, even 
though their wills be entirely free. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE SPRINGS OF ACTION. 

HPHERE are certain elements of the human consti- 
tution, in part natural, in part acquired, which 
always prompt and urge men to action, without 
reference to the good or evil there may be in the 
action, and without reference to its ultimate effects 
od the actor's well-being. These are the Appetites, 
the Desires, and the Affections. 

SECTION 1. 
THE APPETITES. 

The Appetites are cravings of the body, adapted, 
and undoubtedly designed, to secure the continued 
life of the individual and the preservation of the spe- 
cies. They are common to man with the lower orders 
of animals, with this difference, that in man they may 
be controlled, directed, modified, in part suppressed, 
while in brutes they are uncontrollable, and always 
tend to the same modes of gratification. 

Appetite is intermittent. When gratified, it ceases 
for a time, and is renewed for the same person nearly 
at the same intervals, and under similar circumstances. 
It is, while it lasts, an uneasy, even a painful sensa- 
tion, and therefore demands prompt relief, and leads 



THE APPETITES. 11 

to action with a view to such relief. It is also a char- 
acteristic of appetite that its indulgence is attended, 
not merely by relief, but by positive pleasure. 

The appetites are essential to the "well-being of 
men, individually and collectively. Were it not for 
the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of 
gratifying them, both indolence and engrossing indus- 
try would draw off the attention of men from their 
bodily needs ; nourishment would be taken irregu- 
larly, and with little reference to quality ; and one 
would often become aware of his neglect only too late 
to arrest its consequences. A similar remark applies 
to the appetite designed to secure the preservation of 
the species. But for this, it may be doubted whether 
men would willingly take upon themselves the cares, 
labors, responsibilities, and contingent disappoint- 
ments and sorrows involved in the rearing of chil- 
dren. 

In a life conformed to nature, hunger and thirst re- 
cur only when the body actually needs the supply 
which they crave. But stimulating food, by the 
reaction that follows strong excitement of any por- 
tion of the nervous system, may create hunger when 
there is no need of food, and in like manner not only 
intoxicating, but highly stimulating liquids, may occa- 
sion an excessive, morbid, and injurious thirst 

Appetite is modified by habit. There is hardly 
any substance so offensive that it may not by use be- 
come agreeable, then an object of desire, and, at 
length, of intense craving. 



12 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

The craving for repose and that for musculai 
action, though not classed among the appetites, have 
all their characteristics, and serve similar ends in the 
economy of human life. After a certain period of 
activity, rest is felt as a bodily necessity, aa food is, 
after long fasting ; and in like manner, when the 
wearied muscles have had their due repose, there is 
an irresistible tendency to their exercise, without ref- 
erence to any special employment or recreation. It 
is by the alternation of these tendencies that the act- 
ive and industrious are saved from the ruinous conse- 
quences of overtasked limbs or brain, and that the 
indolent are urged to the reluctant activity without 
which health and life itself would be sacrificed. 

The appetites, being mere bodily impulses, and be 
ing all liable to excess or misdirection, need the con- 
trol of the will, and of the principles of action by 
which the will is determined and regulated. 

SECTION n. 

THE DESIRES. 

The Desires are distinguished from the Appetites, 
first, in their not originating from the body ; second- 
ly, in their not being necessarily intermittent ; and 
thirdly, in their tendency to increase indefinitely, often 
through the whole of life, and to gain strength by the 
attainment of their specific objects. If classified b) 
their objects, they might seem too numerous to be 
specified : but they may all be embraced under the 



DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE. 18 

fcitles of th*. Desire for Knowledge, for Society, for Es- 
teem, for Power, and for Superiority. These all may 
be traced, in a more or less rudimentary form, in the 
inferior animals. Many of these animals show an 
active curiosity. Many are gregarious in their native 
state, and most of the domestic animals delight in the 
society of their kind ; some take manifest pleasure in 
human society; and the instances are by no means 
rare, in which animals, by nature mutually hostile, b<*- 
come strongly attached to each other, and render to 
each other the most friendly services. The dog, the 
horse, and the cat evidently crave the esteem of hu- 
man beings, and show tokens of genuine grief when 
they incur rebuke or discern tokens of disapproval. 
The dog maintains with watchful jealousy his own 
authority in his own peculiar domain ; and in the 
chase or on the race-ground the dog and the horse are 
as emulous of success as their masters. 

1. The Desire of Knowledge. This in the human 
being is manifested with the earliest dawn of intelli- 
gence. The infant is busy with eye and hand through- 
out his waking hours ; and that the desire of knowl- 
edge is innate, and has no reference to the use that is 
to be made of the things known, is manifest from the 
rapid growth of knowledge in the first years of life, 
before the child has any distinct conception of the 
uses of objects, or any conscious capacity of employ- 
ing them for his own benefit. It may be doubted 
whether in any subsequent year of life so much 
knowledge is acquired as during the first year. The 



14 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

child bat a year old has learned the nature of the fa- 
miliar objects of the house and the street, the faces 
and names of a large number of relatives, domestics, 
and acquaintances, the regular succession of seasons 
and events in daily domestic life, and the meanings of 
most of the words that are addressed to him or em- 
ployed concerning him and the objects around him. 
In more advanced life this desire grows by what it 
feeds on, and never ceases to be active. It assumes, 
indeed, different directions, in part determining, and 
in part determined by, condition, profession, or em- 
ployment. Even in the most idle and frivolous, it is 
strong, often intense, though its objects be worthless. 
Such persons frequently are as sedulous in collecting 
the paltry gossip of society as the naturalist in ac- 
quiring the knowledge of new species of plants or 
insects, and as ingenious in their inferences from what 
they see and hear as the philosopher in his inductions 
from the facts of science. 

Not only in infancy, but through life, knowledge 
is sought evidently for its own sake, and not 
merely for its uses. But a very small part of what 
one knows can be made of practical utility as to his 
own comfort or emolument. Many, indeed, volunta- 
rily sacrifice ease, gain, position, in the pursuit of 
science or literature. Fame, if it accrues, is not un- 
welcome ; but by the higher order of minds fame is 
not pursued as an end, and there are many depart- 
ments of knowledge in which little or no reputation 
is to be attained. Then, too, it is not the learner, 



DESIRE OF SOCIETY. 16 

but the teacher, not the profound scholar, merely, but 
the able expositor, speaker, or writer, who can expect 
a distinguished name ; while there are many who con- 
tent themselves with acquiring knowledge, without 
attempting publicity. Nor yet can benevolence ac- 
count for the love of knowledge. Many, indeed, 
make their attainments the property of others, and 
are zealous in diffusing their own scientific views, or 
in dispensing instruction in their own departments. 
But there are also many solitary, recluse students ; 
and it may be doubted whether, if a man who is 
earnestly engaged in any intellectual pursuit were 
shut out entirely from human society, and left alone 
with his books or with nature, his diligence would be 
relaxed, or his ardor abated. 

2. The Desire of Society. This, also, is mani- 
fested so early as to show that it is an original, and 
not an acquired principle. Little children dread soli- 
tude, crave the presence of familiar faces, and evince 
pleasure in the company of children of their own age. 
A child, reared in comparative seclusion and silence, 
however tenderly, suffers often in health, always in 
mental vigor and elasticity ; while in a large family, 
and in intimate association with companions of his 
own age, the individual child has the fullest and most 
rapid development of all his powers* There is, in- 
deed, in the lives of many children, a period when 
the presence of strangers is unwelcome ; but this 
state of feeling — seldom of long duration — can in 
most instances be traced to some sudden fright, harsh 
voice, or imagined neglect or unkindness. 



16 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

The natural course of human life proves that man 
is by the necessity of his nature a social being. The 
young of other animals are at a very early period 
emancipated and forsaken by their parents, while the 
human child has many years of dependence, and is 
hardly prepared to dispense with the shelter and kind 
offices of his native home, when he is moved to create 
a new home of his own. 

There is no pursuit in life in which a community of 
interest fails to give added zest and energy. There 
is no possible ground of association on which societies 
are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary 
pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act 
in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity 
so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where 
such reasons do not already exist. Even in science 
and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of 
learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, 
and readily suspend their solitary research and study 
for the opportunity of intercommunication on the 
subjects and objects of their pursuit. The cases in 
which society is voluntarily shunned or forsaken are 
as rare as the cases of congenital disease or deform- 
ity ; and for every such instance there may generally 
be assigned some grave, if not sufficient, cause. Re- 
ligious asceticism has, indeed, induced many persons, 
especially in the early Christian ages, to lead a soli- 
tary life ; but the coenobites have always vastly out- 
numbered the hermits ; monasteries (solitary abodes) 
have become convents (assemblages) ; and those who 



DESIRE OF ESTEEM. 17 

are shut out from the rest of the world find comfort 
in social devotion, in the common refectory, and in 
those seasons of recreation when the law of silence is 
suspended. For prisoners solitary confinement has 
been found deleterious both to body and mind, and 
this system, instituted with philanthropic purpose, 
and commended on grounds that seemed intimately 
connected with the reformation of the guilty, is now 
generally repudiated as doing violence to human na- 
ture. Even for the insane, society, with judicious 
classification and restriction, is an essential part of 
curative treatment, and the success of asylums, as 
compared with the most skilful and humane private 
treatment, is due in great part to the social element. 

It cannot be maintained that the desire of society 
results from fear, and from the felt need of mutual 
protection ; for it exists in full at the most fearless 
periods of life, and among those who are the least 
timid, and is equally manifest in the strong and the 
weak, in those who can proffer and in those who might 
crave protection. 

3. The Desire of Esteem. It is almost superflu- 
ous to say that this is a native and indestructible ele- 
ment of the human constitution. Its first manifesta- 
tions bear even date with the earliest displays of 
intelligence and affection. To the infant, approval 
is reward ; rebuke, even by look, is punishment. The 
hope of esteem is the most healthful and effective 
stimulant in the difficult tasks of childhood and of 
school -life Under the discipline of parents both 

2 



18 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

wise and good, it is among the most important and 
salutary means of moral discipline. It is seldom de- 
ficient in young persons. Their chief danger lies in 
its excess ; for when it is too strongly developed, it 
inclines them to seek at all hazards the approval of 
their associates for the time being. Hence the chiei 
danger from vicious or unscrupulous associates. The 
first steps in vice are oftener prompted, no doubt, by 
the desire for the complacent regard of one's com- 
panions than by an antecedent disposition to evil. 
Indeed, the confession is often made, that these steps 
were taken with compunction and horror, solely from 
the fear of ridicule and from the desire to win the 
approval and favor of older transgressors. 

On the other hand, the desire of the esteem of good 
men is one of the strongest auxiliary motives to 
virtue ; while a yearning for the Divine approval 
forms an essential part of true piety towards God. 

4. The Desire of Power. This is manifested in 
every period of life, and in the exercise of every fac- 
ulty, bodily, mental, and moral. It is this which gives 
us pleasure in solitary exercises of physical strength, 
in climbing mountains, swimming, lifting heavy 
weights, performing difficult gymnastic feats. It is 
this, more than deliberate cruelty, that induces boys 
to torture animals, or to oppress and torment their 
weaker or more timid companions. 

In intellectual pursuits, the love of power leads to 
many exercises and efforts that have no ulterior 
result. The mathematician will turn aside from his 



DESIRE OF SUPERIORITY. 10 

course of study to master a problem, which involves 
qo new principle, but is merely difficult and perplex- 
ing. The reading of books obscurely written, or in 
languages that task the utmost power of analysis, fre- 
quently has no other result, and probably no other 
object, than the trial of strength. What can be at- 
tained only by strenuous mental labor, is for that very 
reason sought, even if it promise no utility. 

In the affairs of practical life, every man desires 
to make his influence felt. With persons of the 
highest character, the love of power is manifest in 
connection with the aim to be useful. Even the most 
modest men, while they may spurn flattery, are glad- 
dened by knowing that they are acting upon the wills 
and shaping the characters of those around them. 

The love of property belongs in great part under 
this head. Money is power, preeminently so at 
the present day. Property confers influence, and 
puts at one's command resources that may be tne 
means of extended and growing power alike over in- 
animate nature and the wills of men. Avarice, or 
the desire of money for its own sake, is not an orig- 
inal desire. Few or none are avaricious in very early 
life. But money, first sought for the power it con- 
fers, from being a means becomes an end, to such a 
degree that, in order to possess it, the miser will 
forego the very uses for which he at the outset 
learned to value it. 

5. The Desire of Superiority. This is so nearly 
universal in all conditions of society, and at all periods 



20 MURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

of life, that it must be regarded as an original ele- 
ment of human nature. Without it there would be 
little progress. In every department of life, men 
stimulate one another toward a higher standard of 
sndeavor, attainment, or excellence. What each does, 
his neighbor would fain outdo ; what each becomes, 
his neighbor would fain surpass. It is only by per- 
version that this desire tends to evil. It finds its 
proper satisfaction, not in crushing, depressing, or in- 
juring a rival, but barely in overtaking and excelling 
him ; and the higher his point of attainment, the 
greater is the complacency experienced in reaching 
and transcending it. On the race-ground, I do not 
want to compete with a slow runner, nor will it afford 
me the slightest satisfaction to win the race by trip 
ping up my competitor ; what I want is to match my- 
self with the best runner on a fair field, and to show 
myself his equal or superior. The object striven for 
is the individual's own ideal, and those whom he suc- 
cessively passes on his course mark but successive 
stages on his progress toward that ideal. Thus, in 
the pursuit of moral excellence, it is only a mean and 
a bad man who can imagine that he gains anything 
by detracting from the merit of others ; but he who 
is sincerely contending for a high place among virtu- 
ous men, rejoices in the signal examples of goodness 
of every kind which it is his privilege to emulate, and 
rejoices most of all that the ideal of perfect excel- 
lence — once only actualized in human form — is so 
pure and lofty that it may be his life-work to ap- 
proach it without reaching it. 



THE DESIRES. 21 

Emulation is not envy, nor need it lead to envy. 
A.mong those who strive for superiority there need be 
no collision. The natural desire is to be, not to seem, 
superior ; to have the consciousness, not the mere out- 
ward semblance, of high attainment; and of attain- 
ment, not by a conventional, but by an absolute stand- 
ard ; and this aim excludes none, — there may be as 
many first places as there are deserving candidates 
for them. Then, too, there is so wide a diversity of 
ideals, both in degree and in kind, there are so many 
different ruling aims, and so many different routes by 
which these aims are pursued, that there need be lit- 
tle danger of mutual interference. Even as regards 
external rewards, so far as they depend on the bounty 
of nature, the constitution of society, or the general 
esteem and good will of men, the success of one does 
not preclude the equal success of many ; but, on the 
other hand, the merited prosperity and honor of the 
individual cannot fail to be of benefit to the whole 
community. It is only in offices contingent on elec- 
tion or appointment that the aspirant incurs a heavy 
risk of failure; but when we consider how meanly 
men are often compelled to creep into office and to 
grovel in it, it can hardly be supposed that a genuine 
desire of superiority holds a prominent place among 
the motives of those who are willingly dependent on 
patronage or on popular suffrage. 

These desires, according as one or another has the 
ascendency, prompt to action, without reference to 



22 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the good or the evil there may be in the action ; and 
they therefore need the control of reason, and of 
the principles which reason recognizes in the govern- 
ment of conduct 

section m. 

THE AFFECTIONS. 

The Affections are distinguished from the De- 
sires, mainly in these two particulars : first, that the 
Desires are for impersonal objects, the Affections, for 
persons ; and secondly, that the Desires prompt to 
actions that have a direct reference to one's self ; the 
Affections, to actions that have a direct reference to 
others. 

The Affections are benevolent or malevolent. 

1. The benevolent affections are Love, Reverence, 
Gratitude, Kindness, Pity, and Sympathy. 

Love needs no definition, and admits of none. It 
probably never exists uncaused ; though it survives 
all real or imagined ground for it, and in some cases 
seems rendered only the more intense by the admitted 
un worthiness of its object. When it is not the rea- 
son for marriage, it can hardly fail to grow from the 
conjugal relation between one man and one woman, 
if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be 
held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should 
not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protec- 
tion from the first moment of his being ; the father 
whc extends a father's care over his children finds in 
that care a constant source of love ; and the children, 



REVERENCE. 23 

waking into conscious life under the ministries of 
parental benignity and kindness, have no emotion so 
early, and no early emotion so strong, as filial love* 
It may be doubted whether there is among the mem- 
bers of the same family a natural affection, indepen- 
dent of relations practically recognized in domestic 
life. It is very certain that at both extremities of the 
social scale family affection is liable to be impaired, 
on the one hand, by the delegation of parental duties 
to hirelings, and, on the other, by the inability to 
render them constantly and efficiently. We' may 
observe also a difference in family affection, traceablo 
indirectly to the influence of climate. Out-of-door 
life is unfavorable to the intimate union of families ; 
while domestic love is manifestly the strongest in 
those countries where the shelter and hearth of the 
common home are necessary for a large portion of the 
year. 

Friendship is but another name for love between 
persons unconnected by domestic relations, actual or 
prospective. 

Love for the Supreme Being, or piety, differs not 
in kind from the child's love for the parent ; but it 
rightfully transcends all other love, inasmuch as the 
benefits received from God include and surpass all 
other benefits. To awake, then, to a consciousness of 
our actual relation to God, is " to love Him with all 
the heart, and with all the understanding, and all the 
soul, and all the strength." 

Reverenoe is the sentiment inspired by advanced 



24 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

superiority in such traits of mind and character as we 
regard with complacency in ourselves, or with esteem 
in our equals. Qualities which we do not esteem we 
may behold with admiration (that is, wonder), but 
not with reverence. Our reverence for age is not for 
advanced years alone, but for the valuable experience 
which they are supposed to have given, and especially 
for the maturity of excellence which belongs to the 
old age of good men, of which their features gener- 
ally bear the impress, and which, in the absence of 
knowledge, we are prone to ascribe to a venerable 
mien and aspect. A foolish or wicked old man com- 
mands no reverence by his years. 

God, as possessing in infinite fulness all the proper 
ties which we revere in man, must ever be the worthy 
object of supreme reverence. 

Gratitude, though it can hardly be disjoined from 
love, is seldom cherished for the same person in the 
same degree with love. We love our beneficiaries 
more than our benefactors. We love those dependent 
upon us more than those on whom we depend. The 
mother's love for her child is the strongest of human 
affections, and undoubtedly exceeds that even of the 
child for the mother to whom he owes every benefit 
and blessing under heaven. We may be fervently 
grateful to persons whom we have never seen ; but 
there cannot be much vividness in our love for them. 
Love to God, whom we have not seen, needs to be 
kindled, renewed, and sustained by gratitude for the 
incessant flow of benefits from Him, and by the 



SYMPATHY. 25 

promise — contingent on charactei — of blessings im- 
measurable and everlasting. 

Kindness is benevolence for one's kind, — a de- 
light in their happiness and well-being, a readiness to 
perform friendly offices whenever and however they 
may be needed. In its lower forms it is designated 
as good nature ; when intense and universal, it is 
termed philanthropy. It befits the individual man as 
a member of a race of kindred, and is deemed so es- 
sential an attribute of the human character, that he 
who utterly lacks it is branded as inhuman, while its 
active exercise in the relief of want and suffering is 
emphatically termed humanity. 

Pity is the emotion occasioned by the sight or 
knowledge of distress or pain. While without it 
there can be no genuine kindness, it may exist with- 
out kindness. There are persons tenderly sensitive to 
every form of suffering, who yet feel only for the suf- 
ferer, not with him, and who would regard and treat 
him coldly or harshly, if he were not a sufferer. In 
such cases, pity would seem to be a selfish feeling ; 
and there can be no doubt that some men relieve dis- 
tress and poverty, as they would remove weeds from 
a flower-bed, because they are offensive to the sight. 

Sympathy is feeling, not for, but with others. 1 It 
has for its objects successes and joys, no less than suf- 
ferings and sorrows ; and probably is as real and 
intense in the case of the former as of the latter, 

l Compassion ought from its derivation to have the same meaning with 
lympathp ; but in common usage it is synonymous with pity. 



26 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

though its necessity is less felt and its offices are less 
prized in happy than in sad experiences. Kindness 
alone cannot produce sympathy. In order to feel 
with another, we must either have passed through 
similar experiences, or must have an imagination suf- 
ficiently vivid to make them distinctly present to our 
thought. This latter power is by no means necessary 
to create even the highest degree of kindness or of 
pity ; and among the most active and persevering in 
works of practical beneficence, there are many who 
feel intensely for, yet but faintly with, the objects of 
their charity. On the other hand, sympathy some- 
times finds its chief exercise in sensational literature, 
and there are persons, profoundly moved by fictitious 
representations of distress, who yet remain inactive 
and indifferent as regards the real needs and suffer- 
ings around them that crave relief. 

2. The malevolent affections are Anger, Resent- 
ment, Envy, Revenge, and Hatred. 

Anger is the sense of indignation occasioned by 
real or imagined wrong. When excited by actual 
wrong-doing, and when contained within reasonable 
bounds, it is not only innocent, but salutary. It in- 
tensifies the virtuous feeling which gives it birth ; and 
its due expression is among the safeguards of soci- 
ety against corruption and evil. But when indulged 
without sufficient cause, or suffered to become exces- 
sive or to outlast its occasion, it is in itself evil, and it 
may lead to any and every form of social injustice, 
Mid of outrage against the rights of man and the law 
rf God. 



ENVY. 3CT 

Resentment is the feeling excited by injury done 
to ourselves. This also is innocent and natural, when 
its occasion is sufficient, and its limits reasonable. It 
may prevent the repetition of injury, and the spon- 
taneous tendency to it, which is almost universal, is 
an efficient defence against insult, indignity, and en- 
croachment on the rights of individuals. But, in- 
dulged or prolonged beyond the necessity of self- 
defence, it is prone to reverse the parties, and to make 
the injured person himself the wrong-doer. 

Both anger and resentment are painful emotions, 
and on this account are self-limited in a well-ordered 
mind. He who makes happiness his aim will, if wise, 
give these disturbing forces the least possible hold 
upon him, whether in intensity or in duration. 

Envy has been defined as the excess of emulation. 
It seems rather to be a deficiency in the genuine prin- 
ciple of emulation. The instinctive desire of supe- 
riority leads us, as we have seen, to aim at absolutely 
high attainments, and to measure ourselves less by 
what others are, than by our own ideal. It is only 
those of lower aims, who seek to supplant others on 
their career. Envy is the attempt, not to rise or ex- 
cel, but to stand comparatively high by subverting 
those who hold or seek a higher position. No just 
man voted for the banishment of Aristides because he 
was always called the Just ; but his ostracism was the 
decree of those who knew that they could obtain no 
reputation for justice till he were put out of their 
way. 



28 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Revenge is the desire to inflict evil for evil. In 
principle it is always wrong ; for the evil-doer, 
though he may merit transient anger and resentment, 
is not therefore placed beyond our benevolence, but is 
rather commended to our charity as one who may be 
reformed and may become worthy of our esteem. In 
practice, revenge can scarce ever be just. Our self- 
love so exaggerates our estimate of the wrong we re- 
ceive, that we could hardly fail to retaliate by greater 
wrong, and thus to provoke a renewal of the injury. 
There are, no doubt, cases in which self-defence may 
authorize the immediate chastisement or disabling of 
the wrong-doer, and in an unsettled state of society, 
where there is no legal protection, it" may be the right 
of individuals to punish depredation or personal out- 
rage ; but acts of this kind are to be justified on the 
plea of necessity, not of revenge. 

Hatred is the result of either of the malevolent 
affections above named, when carried to excess, or 
suffered to become permanent. It precludes the ex- 
ercise of all the benevolent affections. No man can 
rightfully be the object of hatred ; for there is no 
man who has not within him some element or possi- 
bility of good, none who has not rights that should 
be respected, none who is not entitled to pity for his 
sufferings, and, still more, for his sins. 

The affections, benevolent and malevolent, are 
common to man with lower animals. Love and 
hatred are manifested by all of them whose habits are 



THE AFFECTIONS. 29 

open to our inspection ; anger, by not a few ; grati- 
tude, kindness, pity, sympathy, resentment, and re- 
venge, by the more intelligent ; envy, by those most 
completely domesticated ; reverence, perhaps, by the 
dog towards his master. 

The affections all prompt to action, and do not 
discriminate the qualities of actions. Hence they 
need the control and guidance of reason, and can 
safely be indulged only in accordance with the princi- 
ples which reason recognizes as supreme in the con- 
duct of life. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE GOVERNING PRINCIPLES OF ACTION. 

HPHE appetites, desires, and affections constitute the 
impelling force in all action. Were we not pos- 
sessed of them, we should not act. There is no act 
of any kind, good or bad, noble or base, mental or 
bodily, of which one or another of them is not the 
proximate cause. They are also imperative in their 
demands. They crave immediate action, — the appe- 
tites, in procuring or using the means of bodily grati- 
fication ; the desires, in the increase of their objects ; 
the affections, in seeking or bestowing their appro- 
priate tokens or expressions, whether good or evil. 
Were there no check, the specific appetite, desire, or 
affection to which circumstances gave the ascendency 
for the time being, would act in its appropriate direc- 
tion, until counteracted by another, brought into su- 
premacy by a new series of circumstances. This is 
the case with brutes, so far as we can observe their 
modes of action. Here, in man, reason intervenes, 
and takes cognizance of the tendencies and the quali- 
ties of actions. 

Reason insiders actions under two points of view, 
— interest and obligation, — expediency and right. 
The questions which we inwardly ask concerning 



EXPEDIENCY AND RIGH1 . 31 

actions all resolve themselves into one of these, — Is 
the act useful or desirable for me ? or, Is it my right 
or my duty ? He who is wont to ask the former of 
these questions is called a prudent man ; he who 
habitually asks the latter is termed a virtuous or good 
man. He who asks neither of them yields himself, 
after the manner of the brutes, to the promptings of 
appetite, desire, and affection, and thus far omits to 
exercise the reason which distinguishes him from the 
brutes. 

There can be no doubt that expediency and right 
coincide. Under the government of Supreme Be- 
nevolence, it is impossible that what ought to be done 
should not conduce to the welfare of him who does 
it. But its beneficent results may be too remote for 
him to trace them, nay, may belong to a life beyond 
death, to which human cognizance does not reach ; 
while what ought not to be done may promise sub- 
stantial benefit so far as man's foresight extends. 
Then, too, it is at least supposable that there may be 
cases, in which, were they solitary cases, expediency 
might diverge from right, yet in which, because they 
belong to a class, it is for the interest of society and 
of every individual member of society that general 
laws should be obeyed. It is obvious also, that there 
are many cases, in which the calculation of expedi- 
ency involves details too numerous and too compli- 
cated to be fully understood by a mind of ordinary 
discernment, while the same mind car clearly per- 
ceive what course of conduct is in accordance with the 



82 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

strict rule of right. Still farther, in a question of 
conduct in which appetite, desire, or affection is con 
cerned, we cannot take as calm and dispassionate a 
view of our true interest, as we should of the interest 
of another person in like case. The impelling force 
may be so strong, that for the time being we sincerely 
regard it as expedient — though we know that it is 
not right — to yield to it. 

For these reasons there is an apparent conflict be- 
tween the useful and the right. Though a perfectly 
wise and dispassionate man might give precisely the 
same answer in every instance to the question of in- 
terest and that of duty, men, limited and influenced 
as they are, can hardly fail in many instances to an- 
swer these questions differently. The man who makes 
his own imagined good his ruling aim does many 
things which he would not defend on the ground of 
right ; the man who determines always to do right 
sometimes perforins acts of reputed and conscious self- 
denial and self-sacrifice. 

Nor yet can more general considerations of expe- 
diency, reference to the good of others, to the greatest 
good of the greatest number, serve as a guide to the 
right or a test of the right. We have less foresight 
as regards others than as regards ourselves ; the de- 
tails involved in the true interest of any community, 
society, or number of persons, are necessarily more 
numerous and complicated than those involved in our 
own well-being ; and, if not appetite or desire, the 
benevolent or malevolent affections are fully as apt to 



EXPEDIENCY. 88 

warp our judgment and to misdirect our conduct it. 
the case of others as in our ow n case. 

We perceive then that expediency, whether with 
reference to ourselves or to others, is not a trust- 
worthy rule of conduct. Yet while it cannot hold 
the first place, it occupies an important place ; for 
there are many cases in which the question before ua 
is not what we ought to do, but what it is best for ua 
to do. Thus, if there be several acts, all equally right, 
only one of which can be performed, we are evidently 
entitled to perform the act which will be most pleas- 
ing or useful to ourselves. If there be an end which 
it is our right or duty to attain, and there be several 
equally innocent modes of attaining it, the question 
for us is, by which of these modes we may find the 
least difficulty or gain the highest enjoyment or ad- 
vantage. If there be several duties incumbent upon 
us at the same time and place, all of which have 
equal intrinsic claims, yet one of which must necessa- 
rily take precedence of the rest, the question which 
shall have precedence is a question of expediency, 
that by which we may do the most good being the 
foremost duty. 

Expediency is not a characteristic of actions. 
An act is not in itself expedient or inexpedient, 
but is made one or the other by varying circum- 
stances alone ; while there are acts in themselves 
good which no possible circumstances could make bad, 
and there are acts in themselves bad which no possi- 
ble circumstances could make good. If, therefore, 



84 MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 

there be a science which has for its province the in- 
trinsic qualities of actions, questions of expediency 
have no place in such a science. 

Moral Philosophy or Ethics (synonymous terms), 
is the science which treats of human actions. The 
term morals is often applied to external actions ; but 
always with reference to the intentions from which 
they proceed. We can conceive of the treatment of 
actions under various aspects, as wise or unwise, 
agreeable or disagreeable, spontaneous or deliberate ; 
but by the common consent of mankind, at least of 
the civilized and enlightened portion of mankind, the 
distinction of actions as right or wrong is regarded as 
of an importance so far transcending all other distinc- 
tions, as to render them of comparatively little mo- 
ment. Therefore Moral Philosophy confines itself to 
this single distinction, and takes cognizance of others, 
only as they modify this, or are modified by it. The 
questions which Moral Philosophy asks and answers 
are these : — What constitutes the right ? How is it 
to be ascertained ? Wherein lies the obligation to 
the right ? What are the motives to right action ? 
What specific actions, or classes of actions are right, 
and why ? What specific actions, or classes of actions 
are wrong, and why ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE RIGHT. 

TT^VERY object, by virtue of its existence, has its 
"^ appropriate place, purpose, uses, and relations. 
At every moment, each specific object is either in or 
out of its place, fulfilling or not fulfilling its purpose, 
subservient to or alienated from its uses, in accord- 
ance or out of harmony with its relations, and there- 
fore in a state of fitness or unfitness as regards other 
objects. Every object i» at every moment under the 
control of the intelligent will of the Supreme Being, 
or of some finite being, and is by that will maintained 
either in or out of its place, purpose, uses, or relations, 
and thus in a state of fitness or unfitness with regard 
to other objects. Every intelligent being, by virtue 
of his existence, bears certain definite relations to out- 
ward objects, to his fellow-beings, and to his Creator. 
At every moment, each intelligent being is either 
faithful or unfaithful to these relations, and thus in a 
state of fitness or unfitness as regards outward objects 
and other beings. Thus fitness or unfitness may be 
affirmed, at every moment, of every object in exist- 
ence, of the volition by which each object is con- 
trolled, and of every intelligent being, with regard to 
the exercise of his will toward or upon outward 



3t> MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

objects or his fellow-beings. Fitness and unfitness are 
the ultimate ideas that are involved in the terms 
right and wrong. These last are metaphorical ternw, 
— right (Latin, rectus'), straight, upright, according 
to rule, and therefore fit ; wrong, wrung, distort ed, 
deflected, twisted out of place, contrary to rule, and 
therefore unfit. We are so constituted that we can- 
not help regarding fitness with complacency and 
esteem ; unfitness, with disesteem and disapproval, 
even though we ourselves create it or impersonate it. 

Fitness is the only standard by which we regard 
our own actions or the actions of others as good or 
evil, — by which we justify or condemn ourselves or 
others. Duty has fitness for its only aim and end. To 
whatever object comes under our control, its fit place, 
purpose, uses, and relations are due ; and our percep- 
tion of what is thus due constitutes our duty, and 
awakens in us a sense of obligation. To ourselves, 
and to other beings and objects, our fidelity to our 
relations has in it an intrinsic fitness ; that fitness is 
due to them and to ourselves ; and our perception of 
what is thus due constitutes our duty, and awakens in 
as a sense of obligation. 

Right and wrong are not contingent on the 
knowledge of the moral agent. Unfitness, misuse, 
abuse, is none the less intrinsically wrong, because it 
is the result of ignorance. It is out of harmony with 
the fitness of things. It deprives an object of its 
due use. It perverts to pernicious results what is 
aalutary in its purpose. It lessens for the agent his 



ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE RIGHT. 37 

aggregate of good and of happiness, and increases 
for him his aggregate of evil and of misery. In this 
sense — far more significant than that of arbitrary 
infliction — the well-known maxim of jurisprudence, 
" Ignorance of the law excuses no one," 1 is a funda- 
mental law of nature. 

There is, however, an important distinction between 
absolute and relative right. In action, the absolute 
right is conduct in entire conformity with beings and 
objects as they are ; the relative right is conduct in 
accordance with beings and objects as, with the best 
means of knowledge within our reach, we believe 
them to be. The Omniscient Being alone can have 
perfect knowledge of all beings and things as they are. 
This knowledge is possessed by men in different 
degrees, corresponding to their respective measures of 
intelligence, sagacity, culture, and personal or tradi- 
tional experience. In the ruder conditions of society, 
acts that seem to us atrociously wrong, often proceed 
from honest and inevitable misapprehension, are right 
in their intention, and are therefore proper objects of 
moral approbation. In an advanced condition of in- 
telligence, and especially under high religious culture, 
though the realm of things unknown far exceeds that 
of things known, there is a sufficiently clear under- 
standing of the objects and relations of ordinary life 
to secure men against sins of ignorance, and to leave 
in their wrong-doing no semblance or vestige of right. 

The distinction between absolute and relative right 

l "Ignorantia egis nemincm excusat." 



88 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

enables us to reconcile two statements that may 
have seemed inconsistent with each other, namely, 
that " the character of an action, whether good or bad, 
depends on the intention of the agent," and " that un- 
fitness, misuse, abuse, is none the less wrong because 
the result of ignorance." Both these propositions are 
true. The same act may be in intent right and good, 
and yet, through defect of knowledge, wrong and 
evil ; and it may, in virtue of its good intent, be 
attended and followed by beneficent results, while at 
the same time the evil that there is in it may be 
attended or followed by injurious consequences. We 
may best illustrate this double character of actions by 
a case so simple that we can see through it at a single 
glance. I will suppose that I carry to a sick person a 
potion which I believe to be an efficient remedy, but 
which, by a mistake for which I am not accountable, 
proves to be a deadly poison. My act, by the stand- 
ard of absolute right, is an unfitting and therefore a 
wrong act, and it has its inevitable result in killing 
the patient. But because my intention was right, I 
have not placed myself in any wrong relation to God 
or man. Nay, if I procured what I supposed to be a 
healing potion with care, cost, and trouble, and for 
one whose suffering and need were his only claim 
upon me, I have by my labor of love brought myself 
into an even more intimate relation, filial and frater- 
nal, with God and man, the result of which must be 
my enhanced usefulness and happiness. If on the 
other hand I had meant to poison the man, but had by 



SINS OF IGNORANCE. 39 

mistake given him a healing potion, my act would 
have been absolutely right, because conformed to the 
fitness of things, but relatively wrong, because in its 
intention and purpose opposed to the fitness of things ; 
and as in itself fitting, it would have done the sick 
man good, while, as in its purpose unfitting, it would 
have thrown me out of the relations in which I 
ought to stand both with God and man. 

Mistakes as to specific acts of duty bear the 
closest possible analogy to the case of the poison 
given for medicine. The savage, who sincerely means 
to express reverence, kindness, loyalty, fidelity, may 
perform, in the expression of those sentiments, acts 
that are utterly unfitting, and therefore utterly 
wrong ; and if so, each of these acts produces its due 
consequences, it may be, baleful and lamentable. Yet 
because he did the best he knew in the expression of 
these sentiments, he has not sunk, but risen in his 
character as a moral being, — has become better and 
more capable of good. 

Ignorance of the right, however, is innocent, only 
when inevitable. At the moment of action, indeed, 
what seems to me fitting is relatively right, and were 
I to do otherwise, even though my act were absolutely 
right, it would be relatively wrong. But if I have 
had and neglected the means of knowing the right, 1 
have violated the fitnesses of my own nature by not 
employing my cognitive powers on subjects of vital 
importance to my well-being. In this case, though 



40 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

what are called the sins of ignorance may be mistakes 
and not sins, the ignorance itself has all the charac- 
teristics that attach themselves to the term sm, and 
must be attended with proportionally harmful conse- 
quences to the offender. 



CHAPTER Y. 

MEANS AND SOURCES OP KNOWLEDGE AS TO RIGHT 
AND WRONG. 

SECTION I. 

CONSCIENCE. 

/ CONSCIENCE is a means, not a source, of knowl- 
edge. It is analogous to sight and hearing. It 
is the power of perceiving fitness and unfitness. Yet 
more, it is consciousness, — a sense of our own per 
sonal relation to the fitting and the unfitting, of our 
power of actualizing them in intention, will, and con- 
duct. It is in this last particular that man differs 
from the lower animals. They have an instinctive 
perception of fitness, and an instinctive impulse to 
acts befitting their nature. But no brute says to him- 
self, " I am acting in accordance with the fitness of 
things ; " while man virtually says to himself, in 
every act, " I am doing what it is fit for me to do," 
or, "I am doing what it is unfitting for me to do." 

Conscience is a judicial faculty. Its decisions are 
based upon such knowledge as the individual has, 
whether real or imagined, and from whatever source 
derived. It judges according to such law and evi- 
dence as are placed before it. Its verdict is always 



42 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

relatively right, a genuine verdict (verum dictum), 
though, by the absolute standard of right, it may be 
wrong, through defect of knowledge, — precisely as 
in a court of law an infallibly wise and incorruptibly 
just judge may pronounce an utterly erroneous or un- 
just decision, if he have before him a false statement 
of facts, or if the law which he is compelled to ad- 
minister be unrighteous. 

We may illustrate the function of conscience by 
reference to a question now agitated in our commu- 
nity, — the question as to the moral fitness of the 
moderate use of fermented liquors. In civilized 
society, intoxication is universally known to be op- 
posed to the fitnesses of body and mind, an abuse of 
alcoholic liquors, and an abuse of the drinker's own 
personality ; and it is therefore condemned by all con- 
sciences, by none more heartily than by those of its 
victims. But there still remains open the question 
whether entire abstinence from fermented liquors be 
a duty, and this is a question of fact. Says one 
party, " Alcohol, in every form, and in the least quan- 
tity, is a virulent poison, and therefore unfit for body 
and mind." Says the other party, " Wine, moder- 
ately used, is healthful, salutary, restorative, and 
therefore fitted to body and mind." Change the 
opinion of the latter party, their consciences would 
at once take the other side ; and if they retained in 
precept and practice their present position, they would 
retain it self -condemned. Change the opinion of the 
former party, their consciences would assume the 



CONSCIENCE. 43 

ground which they now assail. Demonstrate to the 
whole community — as it is to be hoped physiology 
will do at no distant day — the precise truth in this 
matter, there would remain no difference of conscien- 
tious judgment, whatever difference of practice might 
still continue. 

Conscience, like all the perceptive faculties, 
prompts to action in accordance with its percep- 
tions. In this respect it differs not in the least from 
sight, hearing, taste. Our natural proclivity is to 
direct our movements with reference to the objects 
within the field of our vision, to govern our conduct 
by what we hear, to take into our mouths only sub- 
stances that are pleasing to the taste. Yet fright, 
temerity, or courage may impel us to incur dangers 
which we clearly see ; opiniativeness or obstinacy 
may make us inwardly deaf to counsels or warnings 
which we hear ; and motives of health may induce us 
to swallow the most nauseous drugs. In like manner, 
our inevitable tendency is to govern our conduct by the 
fitness of things when clearly perceived ; but intense 
and unrestrained appetite, desire, or affection may 
lead us to violate that fitness, though distinctly seen 
and acknowledged. 

Men act in opposition to conscience only under 
immediate and strong temptation. The great ma- 
jority of the acts of bad men are conscientious, but 
not therefore meritorious ; for merit consists not in 
doing right when there is no temptation to evil, but 
in resisting temptation. But, as has been said, it is 



44 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

as natural, when there is no inducement to the con- 
trary, to act in accordance with the fitness of things, 
as it is to act in accordance with what we see and 
hear. It is the tendency so to act, that alone renders 
human society possible, in the absence of high moral 
principle. In order to live, a man must so act with 
reference to outward nature ; still more must he so 
act in order to possess human fellowship, physical 
comfort, transient enjoyment, of however low a type ; 
and the most depraved wretch that walks the earth 
purchases his continued being and whatever pleasure 
he derives from it by a thousand acts in accordance 
with the fitness of things to one in which he violates 
that fitness. 

Conscience, like all the perceptive faculties, is edu- 
cated by use. The watchmaker's or the botanist's 
eye acquires an almost microscopic keenness of vision. 
The blind man's hearing is so trained as to supply, in 
great part, the lack of sight. The epicure's taste can 
discriminate flavors whose differences are impercepti- 
ble to an ordinary palate. In like manner, the con- 
science that is constantly and carefully exercised in 
judging of the fit and the unfitting, the right and the 
wrong, becomes prompt, keen, searching, sensitive, 
comprehensive, microscopic. On the other hand, con- 
science, like the senses, if seldom called into exercise, 
becomes sluggish, inert, incapable of minute discrimi- 
nation, or of vigilance over the ordinary conduct of 
life. Yet it is never extinct, and is never pei verted. 
When roused to action, even in the most obdurate, it 



CONSCIENCE. 45 

resumes its judicial severity, and records its verdict 
in remorseful agony. 

Conscience is commonly said to be educated by the 
increase of knowledge as to the relations of being*? 
and objects, as to the moral laws of the universe, and 
as to religious verities. This, however, is not true. 
Knowledge does not necessarily quicken the activity 
of conscience, or enhance its discriminating power. 
Conscience often is intense and vivid in the most 
ignorant, inactive and torpid in persons whose cog- 
nitive powers have had the most generous culture. 
Knowledge, indeed, brings the decisions of conscience 
into closer and more constant conformity with the ab- 
solute right, but it does not render its decisions more 
certainly in accordance with the relative right, that 
is, with what the individual, from his point of view, 
ought to will and do. It has the same effect upon 
conscience that accurate testimony has upon the clear- 
minded and uncorrupt judge, whose mind is not 
made thereby the more active or discriminating, nor 
his decision brought into closer accordance with the 
facts as they are presented to him. Knowledge is 
mdeed an indispensable auxiliary to conscience ; but 
this cannot be affirmed exclusively of any specific 
department of knowledge. It is true of all knowl- 
edge ; for there is no fact or law in the universe that 
may not in some contingency become the subject- 
matter or the occasion for the action of conscience. 
Nothing could seem more remote from the ordinary 
field of conscience than the theory of planetary mo- 



46 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

tion ; yet it was this that gave Galilee the one grand 
opportunity of his life for testing the supremacy of 
conscience, — it may be, the sole occasion on which his 
conscience uttered itself strongly against his seeming 
interest, and one on which obedience to conscience 
would have averted the only cloud that ever rested on 
his fame. 

SECTION IL 

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 1. OBSERVATION, EX- 
PERIENCE, AND TRADITION. 

Except so far as there may have been direct commu- 
uications from the Supreme Being, all man's knowl- 
edge of persons, objects, and relations is derived, h) 
the last resort, from observation. Experience is 
merely remembered self-observation. Tradition, oral 
and written, is accumulated and condensed observa- 
tion ; and by means of this each new generation can 
avail itself of the experience of preceding genera- 
tions, can thus find time to explore fresh departments 
of knowledge, and so transmit its own traditions to 
the generations that shall follow. Now what we ob- 
serve in objects is chiefly their properties, or, what is 
the same thing, their fitnesses ; for a property is that 
which fits an object for a specific place or use. What 
we observe in persons is their relations to other beings 
and objects, with the fitnesses that belong to those 
relations. What we experience all resolves itself into 
the fitness or unfitness of persons and objects to one 



KNOWLEDGE OF THE RIGHT. 47 

another or to ourselves. What is transmitted in his- 
tory and in science is the record of fitnesses or unfit- 
nesses that have been ascertained by observation, or 
tested by experience. The progress of knowledge is 
simply an enlarged acquaintance with the fitnesses of 
persons and things. He knows the most, who most 
fully comprehends the relations in which the beings 
and objects in the universe stand, have stood, and 
ought to stand toward one another. Moreover, as 
when we see a fitness within our sphere of action, we 
perceive intuitively that it is right to respect it, wrong 
to violate it, our knowledge of right and wrong is co- 
extensive with our knowledge of persons and things. 
The more enlightened and cultivated a nation is, then, 
the more does it know as to right and wrong, what- 
ever may be its standard of practical morality. 

For instance, in the most savage condition, men 
know, with reference to certain articles of food and 
drink, that they are adapted to relieve the cravings of 
hunger and thirst, and they know nothing more about 
them. They are not acquainted with the laws of 
health, whether of body or of mind. They there- 
fore eat and drink whatever comes to hand, without 
imagining the possibility of wrong-doing in this mat- 
ter. But, with the progress of civilization, they 
learn that various kinds of food and drink impair the 
health, cloud the brain, enfeeble the working power, 
and therefore are unfit for human use ; and no sooner 
is this known, than the distinction of right and wrong 
begins to be recognized, as to what men eat and 



48 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

drink. The more thorough is the knowledge of the 
human body and of the action of various substances 
on its organs and tissues, the more minute and dis- 
criminating *\dll be the perception of fitness or unfit 
ness as to the objects that tempt the appetites, ana 
the keener will be the sense of right or wrong in 
their use. 

For another illustration of the same principle, we 
may take the relation between parents and chil- 
dren. In the ruder stages of society, and especially 
among a nomadic or migratory people, there is not a 
sufficient knowledge of the resources of nature or the 
possibilities of art, to render even healthy and vigor- 
ous life more than tolerable ; while for the infirm and 
feeble, life is but a protracted burden and weariness. 
At the same time, there is no apprehension of the i n- 
tellectual and moral worth of human life, still less, of 
the value even of its most painful experiences as a 
discipline of everlasting benefit. In fine, life is little 
more than a mere struggle for existence. What won- 
der then, that in some tribes filial piety has been 
wont to relieve superannuated parents from an exist- 
ence devoid equally of joy and of hope ; and that in 
others parental love may have even dictated the ex- 
posure — with a view to their perishing — of feeble, 
sickly, and deformed children, incapable of being 
nurtured into self-sustaining and self-depending life ? 
But increased conversance with nature and art con- 
stantly reveals new capacities of comfort and happi- 
in life, and that, not for the strong alone, but for 



KNOWLEDGE OF THE RIGHl. 49 

the feeble, the suffering, the helpless, so that there are 
none to whom humanity knows not how to render 
continued life desirable. At the same time, a higher 
culture has made it manifest that the frailest body 
may be the seat of the loftiest mental activity, moral 
excellence, and spiritual aspiration, and that in such a 
body there is often only a surer and more finished 
education for a higher state of being. Filial piety 
and parental love, therefore, do all in their power to 
prolong the flickering existence of the age-worn and 
decrepit, and to cherish with tender care the life 
which seems born but to die. There is, then, to the 
limited view of the savage, an apparent fitness in 
practices which in their first aspect seem crimes 
against nature ; while increased knowledge develops 
a real and essential fitness in all the refinements ai d 
endearments of the most persevering and skilful love. 

These examples, which might be multiplied indefi- 
nitely, show the dependence of conscience on 
knowledge, not for relatively right decisions, but for 
verdicts in accordance with the absolute right. There 
is no subject that can be presented for the action of 
conscience, on which, upon precisely the same princi- 
ples , divergent and often opposite courses of conduct 
may not be dictated by more or less accurate knowl- 
edge of the subject and its relations. 

It will be seen, also, that with the growth of 

knowledge, conscience has a constantly wider 

scope of action. The number of indifferent acts is 

thus diminished ; the number of positively right or 

4 



50 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

wrong acts, increased. An indifferent act is one for 
the performance of which, rather than its opposite, 
no reason, involving a question of right or wrong, can 
be given. Thus, if the performance or the omission 
of a specific act be equally fitted to the time, place, 
circumstances, and persons concerned, the act is an 
indifferent one ; or, if two or more ways of accom- 
plishing a desired end be equally fitted to time, place, 
circumstances, and persons, the choice between these 
ways is, morally speaking, a matter of indifference. 
But with a knowledge both more extensive and more 
minute of the nature, relations, and fitnesses of be- 
ings and objects, we find an increasing number of in 
stances in which acts that seemed indifferent have a 
clearly perceptible fitness or unfitness, and thus ac- 
quire a distinct moral character as right or wrong. 



SECTION HI 
SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 2. LAW. 

Law is the result of the collective experience, 
in part, of particular communities, in part, of the 
human race as a whole. It encourages, protects, or at 
least permits whatever acts or modes of conduct have 
been found or believed to be fitting, in accordance 
with the nature of things and the well-being of men, 
and therefore right ; it forbids and punishes such acts 
or modes of conduct as have been found or believed to 
be unfitting, opposed to nature and to human well- 



LAW. 51 

being, and therefore wrong. It is far from perfect ; 
it is below the standard of the most advanced minds ; 
but it represents the average knowledge or belief 
of the community to which it belongs. The laws 
of any particular state cannot rise far above this 
average ; for laws unsustained by general opinion 
could not be executed, and if existing in the statute- 
book, they would not have the nature and force of 
law, and would remain on record simply because they 
had lapsed out of notice. Nor can they fall far 
below this average ; for no government can sustain 
itself while its legislation fails to meet the demands 
of the people. 

While law thus expresses the average knowledge 
or belief, it tends to perpetuate its own moral stand- 
ard. The notions of right which it embodies form a 
part of the general education. The specific crimes, 
vices, and wrongs which the law marks out for pun- 
ishment are regarded by young persons, from their 
earliest years, as worthy of the most emphatic censure 
and condemnation ; while those which the law leaves 
unpunished are looked upon as comparatively slight 
and venial. Not only so, the degree of detestation in 
which a community learns to look on specific crimes 
and offences is not in proportion to their actual hei- 
nousness, but to the stress of overt ignominy attached 
to them by legal penalties. Instances of this effect 
of law on opinion will be readily called to mind. 
Thus a common thief loses, and can hardly regain his 
position in society ; while the man who by dishonest 



& MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

bankruptcy commits a hundred thefts in one, can 
hold his place unchallenged, even in the Christian 
church, while it is known to every one that he is liv- 
ing — it may be in luxury — on the money he has 
stolen. The obvious reason is that from time imme- 
morial simple theft has been punished with due, when 
not with undue, severity, while the comparatively 
recent crime of fraudulent bankruptcy has as yet 
been brought very imperfectly within the grasp of 
penal law. Again, no man of clear moral discern- 
ment can doubt that he who consciously and willingly 
imbrutes himself by intoxication is more blameworthy 
than he who sells alcoholic liquors without knowing 
whether they are to be used internally or externally, 
moderately or immoderately, for medicine or for lux- 
ury. Yet because the latter makes himself liable to 
fine and imprisonment, while the former — unless he 
belong to the unprivileged classes — has legal protec- 
tion, instead of the disgraceful punishment he de- 
serves, there is a popular prejudice against the vender 
of strong drink, and a strange tenderness toward the 
intemperate consumer. Yet another instance. There 
are crimes worse than murder. There are modes ol 
moral corruption and ruin, whose victims it were 
mercy to kill. But while the murderer, if he escape 
the gallows, is an outcast and an object of universal 
abhorrence, no social ban rests upon him whose crime 
has been the death of innocence and purity, yet, if 
reached at all by law, can be compounded by the pay- 
ment of monev 



LAW. 68 

But though law is in many respects an imperfect 
moral teacher, and its deficiencies are to be regret- 
ted, its educational power is strongly felt for good, 
especially in communities where the administration of 
justice is strict and impartial. It is of no little worth 
that a child grows up with some fixed beliefs as to 
the turpitude of certain forms of evil, especially as 
the positive enactments of the penal law almost 
always coincide with the wisest judgments of the 
best men in the community. Moreover, law is pro- 
gressive in every civilized community, and in pro- 
portion as it approaches the standard of absolute 
right, it tends to bring the moral beliefs of the people 
into closer conformity with the same standard. It is, 
then, a partial and narrow view of law to regard it 
only or chiefly as the instrument of society for the 
detection and punishment, or even for the direct pre- 
vention of crime. Its far more important function is 
so to train the greater part of each rising generation, 
that certain forms and modes of evil-doing shall nevei 
enter into their plans or purposes. 

The civil, no less than the criminal law is a source 
of knowledge as to the right. The law does not cre- 
ate, but merely defines the rights appertaining to 
persons and property. The laws of different nations 
are, indeed, widely different ; but there may be that 
in their respective histories which makes a difference 
in the actual rights of citizens, or their civil codes may 
present different stages of approach toward the right. 
Thus the laws as to the conveyance and inheritance 



54 MuRAL PHIL0S0PH1. 

of property are in some respects unlike in Franco, 
England, and the United States, and vary considerably 
in the several States of our Union ; but there gener- 
ally exist historical reasons for this variation, and it 
would be found that the ends of justice are best 
served, and the reasonable expectations of the people 
best met in each community, by its own methods of 
procedure. By the law of the land, then, we may 
learn civil rights and obligations, which we have not 
the means of ascertaining by our own independent 
research. 

It remains for us to speak of the factitious rights 
and wrongs, supposed to be created by law. Of 
these there are many. Thus one mode of transacting 
a sale or transfer is in itself as good as another ; and 
it might be plausibly maintained that, if the business 
be fairly and honorably conducted, it matters not 
whether the legally prescribed forms — sometimes 
burdensome and costly — be complied with or omit- 
ted. The law, it may be said, here creates an obliga- 
tion for which there is no ground in nature or the 
fitness of things. This we deny. It is intrinsically 
fitting that all transactions which are liable to dispute 
or question should be performed in ways in which 
they can be attested ; and this cannot be effected 
except by the establishment of uniform methods. He 
who departs from them performs not only an illegal, 
bat an immoral act ; and the legal provisions of the 
kind under discussion have an educational value in 
enlarging the knowledge of the individual as to the 



RELIGION. 55 

conditions and means of security, order, and good 
understanding in human society. 

Similar considerations apply to the crimes created 
by law. Smuggling may serve as an instance. Un- 
doubtedly there are smugglers who would not steal ; 
and their apology is that they are but exercising the 
rights of ownership upon their own property. But 
the public must have property, else its community is 
dissolved ; government must be able to avail itself of 
that property, else its functions are suspended. Men 
need to be taught that the rights of the state are 
inseparable from those of individuals, and no less 
sacred, and the laws that protect the revenue are 
among the most efficient means of teaching this 
lesson. Their only defect is that they attach less 
ignominy to frauds upon the revenue than to other 
modes of theft, and thus fail to declare the whole 
truth, that there is no moral difference between him 
who robs the public and him who robs any one of its 
individual members. 

SECTION IV. 

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 3. CHRISTIANITY. 

Religion, in its relation to ethics, may be regarded 
both as a source of knowledge, and as supplying 
motives for the performance of duty. We are now 
concerned with it in the former aspect ; and it will 
be sufficient for our present purpose to ascertain how 
much Christianity adds to our knowledge of the fit- 



56 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

nesses that underlie all questions of right and duty 
We by no means undervalue the beneficent ministry 
of natural religion in the department of ethics ; but 
the most sceptical admit that Christianity includes 
all of natural religion, while its disciples claim that 
it not only teaches natural religion with a certainty, 
precision, and authority which else were wanting, but 
imparts a larger and prof o under knowledge of God 
and the universe than is within the scope of man's 
unaided reason. 

Christianity covers the entire field of human 
duty, and reveals many fitnesses, recognized when 
seen, but discovered by few or none independently of 
the teachings and example of its Founder ; while it 
gives the emphasis and sanction of a Divine revela- 
tion to many other fitnesses, easily discoverable, but 
liable to be overlooked and neglected. 

In defining the relations of the individual human 
soul to God, Christianity opens to our view a depart- 
ment of duty paramount to all others in importance 
and interest. His fatherly love and care, his moral 
government and discipline, his retributive providence, 
define with unmistakable distinctness certain corre- 
sponding modes, in part, of outward action, and in 
still greater part, of action in that inward realm of 
thought whence the outward life receives its direction 
and impulse. 

The brotherhood of the whole human race, also, 
reveals obligations which would exist on no other 
ground; and for the clear and self -evidencing state- 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 57 

merit of this truth we are indebted solely to Chris- 
tianity. The visible differences of race, color, cult- 
ure, religion, and customs, are in themselves dissociat- 
ing influences. Universal charity is impossible while 
these differences occupy the foreground. Slavery was 
a natural and congenial institution under Pagan au- 
spices ; nor have we in all ancient extra-Christian 
literature, unless it be in Seneca (in whom such sen- 
timents may have had indirectly 1 a Christian origin), 
a single expression of a fellowship broad enough to 
embrace all diversities of condition, much less, of race. 
But the Christian, so far as he consents to receive the 
obvious and undoubted import of Christ's mission and 
teachings, must regard all men as, in nature, in the 
paternal care of the Divine Providence, in religious 
privileges, rights, and capacities, on an equal footing. 
With this view, he cannot but perceive the fitness, 
and therefore the obligation, of many forms of social 
duty, of enlarged beneficence, of unlimited philan- 
thropy, which on any restricted theory of human 
brotherhood would be neither fitting nor reasonable. 
The immortality of the soul, in the next place, 
casts a light at once broad and penetrating upon and 
into every department of duty ; for it is obvious, 
without detailed statement, that the fitnesses, needs, 
and obligations of a terrestrial being of brief dura- 
tion, and those of a being in the nursery and first 

1 The theory that Seneca was tcquainted with St. Paul, or had any 
direct intercourse with Christians in Rome or elsewhere, has no historical 
evidence, and res, s on assumptions that are contradicted by known facts. 



58 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

stage of an endless existence, are very wide apart, — 
that the latter may find it fitting, and therefore may 
deem it right, to do, seek, shun, omit, endure, resign, 
many things which to the former are very properly 
matters of indifference. Immortality was, in a cer- 
tain sense, believed before the advent of Christ, but 
not with sufficient definiteness and assurance to oc- 
cupy a prominent place in any ethical system, or to 
furnish the point of view from which all things in the 
earthly life were to be regarded. Indeed, some of 
the most virtuous of the ancients, among others 
Epictetus, than whom there was no better man, ex- 
pressly denied the life after death, and, of course, 
could have had no conception of the aspects of human 
and earthly affairs as seen in the fight of eternity. 

Christianity makes yet another contribution to eth- 
ical knowledge in the person and character of its 
Pounder, exhibiting in him the very fitnesses it pre- 
scribes, showing us, as it could not in mere precept, 
the proportions and harmonies of the virtues, and 
manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of 
the gentler virtues, 1 which in pre-Christian ages were 
sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with 
contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the 
importance of this teaching by example. The instances 
are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific 
mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment ; 
and Jesus Christ tried successfully several experiments 
in morals that had not been tried before within the 

1 Virtutes leniores, as Cicero call* them. 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 59 

memory of man, and evinced, in his own person and 
by the success of his religion, the superior worth and 
efficacy of qualities which had not previously borne 
the name of virtues. 

Christianity still further enlarges our ethical knowl- 
edge by declaring the universality of moral laws. 
There are many cases, in which it might seem to us 
not only expedient, but even right, to set aside some 
principle acknowledged to be valid in the greater 
number of instances, to violate justice or truth for 
some urgent claim of charity, or to consent to the 
performance of a little evil for the accomplishment of 
a great good. But in all such cases Christianity inter- 
poses its peremptory precepts, assuring us on authority 
which the Christian regards as supreme and infallible, 
that there are no exceptions or qualifications to any 
rule of right ; that the moral law, in all its parts, is of 
inalienable obligation, and that the greatest good can- 
not but be the ultimate result of inflexible obedience. 

That Christianity gives a fuller knowledge of the 
right than can be attained independently of its teach- 
ings, is shown by the review of all extra-Christian 
ethical systems. There is not one of these which does 
not confessedly omit essential portions of the right, 
and hardly one which does not sanction dispositions 
and modes of conduct confessedly wrong and evil • 
while even those who disclaim Christianity zs a 
Divine revelation, fail to detect like omissions and 
blemishes in the ethics of the New Testament. Thus, 
though there is hardly a precept of Jesus Christ, 



60 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the like of which cannot be found in the ethical 
writings of Greece, China, India, or Persia, the fault- 
lessness and completeness of his teachings give them 
a position by themselves, and are among the strongest 
internal evidences of their divinity. They are also 
distinguished from the ethical systems of other teach- 
ers by their positiveness. Others say, " Thou shall 
not ; " Jesus Christ says, " Thou shalt." They for- 
bid and prohibit ; He commands. They prescribe 
abstinence from evil ; He, a constant approach to 
perfection. Buddhism is, in our time, often referred 
to as occupying a higher plane than Christianity ; 
but its precepts are all negative, its virtues are nega- 
tive, and its disciple is deemed most nearly perfect, 
when in body, mind, and soul he has made him- 
self utterly quiescent and inert. Christianity, on the 
other hand, enjoins the unresting activity of all the 
powers and faculties in pursuit of the highest ends. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS. 

/^F the things that are fitting and right, there art 
some which, though they may be described in 
general terms, cannot be defined and limited with en- 
tire accuracy ; there are others which are so obvious 
and manifest, or so easily ascertained, that, in pre- 
cise form and measure, they may be claimed by those 
to whom they are due, and required of those from 
whom they are due. These last are rights, and the 
duties which result from them are obligations. Thus 
it is right that a poor man should be relieved ; and it 
is my duty, so far as I can, to relieve the poor. But 
this or that individual poor man cannot claim that it 
is my duty rather than that of my neighbor to min- 
ister to his needs, or that I am bound to give him 
what I might otherwise give to his equally needy 
neighbor. He has no specific right to any portion of 
my money or goods ; I have no specific obligation to 
give him anything. But if a man has lent nae 
money, he has a right to as much of my money or 
goods as will repay him with interest ; and I am 
under an obligation thus to repay him. Again, it is 
right that in the public highway there should be, 
among those who make it their thoroughfare, mutual 



62 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

accommodation, courtesy, and kindness ; but no one 
man can prescribe the precise distance within which 
he shall not be approached, or the precise amount of 
pressure which may be allowable to his abutters in a 
crowd. Nor yet can the individual citizen occupy the 
street in such a way as to obstruct those who make 
use of it. He has no exclusive rights in the street ; 
nor are others under obligation to yield to him any 
peculiar privileges. But he has a right to exclude 
whom he will from his own garden, and to occupy it 
in whatever way may please him best ; and his fellow- 
citizens are under obligation to keep their feet from 
his alleys and flower-beds, their hands from his fruit, 
and to abstain from all acts that may annoy or injure 
him in the use and enjoyment of his garden. 

Rights — with the corresponding obligations — 
might be divided into natural and legal. But the 
division is nominal rather than real ; for, in the first 
place, there are no natural rights, capable of being 
defined, which are not in civilized countries under 
the sanction and protection of law; secondly, it is 
an open question whether some generally recognized 
rights — as, for instance, that of property — exist in- 
dependently of law; and, thirdly, it may be main- 
tained, on the other hand, that law is powerless to 
create, competent only to declare rights. 

One chief agency of law as to rights is exercised in 
limiting natural rights. Considered simply in his 
relation to outward nature, a man has a manifest 
right to whatever he can make tributary fco his enjoy- 



RIGHTS. 63 

ment or well-being. But his fellow-men have the 
same right. If, then, there be a restricted supply of 
what he and they may claim by equal right, the alter- 
native is, on the one hand, usurpation or perpetual 
strife ; or, on the other, an adjustment by which each 
shall yield a part of what he might claim were there 
no fellow-claimant, and thus each shall have his pro- 
portion of what belongs equally to all. To make this 
adjustment equitably is the province of law. The 
problem which it attempts to solve is, How may each 
individual citizen secure the fullest amount of liberty 
and of material well-being, consistent with the ad- 
mitted or established rights of others ? Under repub- 
lican institutions, this problem presents itself in the 
simplest form, society being in principle an equal 
partnership, in which no one man can claim a larger 
dividend than another. But where birth or condi- 
tion confers certain peculiar rights, the problem must 
be so modified, that the rights conceded to the com- 
mon citizens shall not interfere with these inherited 
or vested rights. In either case, the rights of each 
member of the community are bounded only by the 
conterminous rights of others. Obligations corre- 
spond to rights. Each member of the community is 
under obligation, always to refrain from encroachment 
on the rights of others, and in many cases to aid in 
securing or defending those rights, he on like occa- 
sions and in similar ways having his own rights pro- 
tected by others. 

We will consider separately rights appertaining 
to the person, to property, and to reputation. 



64 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

1. Rights appertaining to the person. The most 
essential of these is the right to life, on which of 
course all else that can be enjoyed is contingent. 
This right is invaded, not only by direct violence, but 
by whatever may impair or endanger health. The 
corresponding obligation of the individual member of 
society is to refrain from all acts, employments, or 
recreations that may imperil life or health, and of 
society collectively, to furnish a police-force adequate 
to the protection of its members, to forbid and punish 
all crimes of violence, to enact and maintain proper 
sanitary regulations, and to suppress such nuisances 
as may be not only annoying, but harmful. 

But the citizen is entitled to protection, only so 
long as he refrains from acts by which he puts other 
lives in peril. If he assault another man with a 
deadly weapon, and his own life be taken in the en- 
counter, the slayer has violated no right, nay, so far 
as moral considerations are concerned, he is not even 
the slayer ; for the man who wrongfully puts himself 
in a position in which another life can be protected 
only at the peril of his own, if his own be forfeited, 
has virtually committed suicide. Nor is the case ma- 
terially altered, if a man in performing an unlawful 
act puts himself in a position in which he may oe 
reasonably supposed to intend violence. Thus, while 
both law and conscience would condemn me if I 
killed a thief in broad daylight, in order to protect 
my property, — if a burglar enter my house by night 
with no intention of violence, and yet in the surprise 



RIGHT TO LIFE LIMITED. bb 

and darkness of the hour I have reason to suppose 
my life and the lives of my family in danger from 
him, the law regards my slaying of such a person as 
justifiable homicide ; and my conscience would acquit 
n,° in defending the right to life appertaining to my 
family and myself, against one whose intention or 
willingness to commit violence was to be reasonably 
inferred from his own unlawful act. 

Society, through the agency of law, in some cases 
and directions limits the right of the individual 
citizen to life, and this to the contingent benefit 
of each, — to the absolute benefit of all. So long 
as men are less than perfect in character and con- 
dition, there must of necessity be some sacrifice of 
life ; but this sacrifice may be reduced to its mini 
mum by judicious legislation. Now, if without such 
legislation the percentage of deaths would be numer- 
ically much higher than under well-framed laws, the 
lives sacrificed under these laws are simply cases in 
which the right of the individual is made to yield to 
the paramount rights of the community. Thus, there 
can be no doubt, that contagious disease of the most 
malignant type could, in many cases, be more suc- 
cessfully treated at the homes of the patients than in 
public hospitals. But if by the removal of patients 
to hospitals the number of cases may be greatly 
atminished, and the contagion speedily arrested, this 
removal is the right of the community, — yet not under 
circumstances of needless privation and hardship, not 
without the best appliances of comfort, care, and skill 



(56 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

which money can procure ; for the public can be justi- 
fied in the exercise of such a right, only by the ex- 
tension of the most generous offices of humanity to 
those who are imperilled for the public good. 

It is only on similar grounds that the death-penalty 
for murder can be justified. The life of the very 
worst of men should be sacrificed only for the pres- 
ervation of life ; for if it be unsafe to leave them at 
liberty, they may be kept under restraint and du- 
ress, without being wholly cut off from the means of 
enjoyment and improvement. The primeval custom 
of the earlier nations required the nearest kinsman 
of the murdered man to kill the murderer with his 

9 

own hand, and in so doing to shed his blood, which 
was believed to have a mysterious efficacy in ex- 
piating the crime. This form of revenge was greatly 
checked and restricted by the institutions of Moses ; 
it fell into disuse among the Jews, with their growth 
in civilization ; and was certainly included in the en- 
tire repeal of the law of retaliation by Jesus Christ 2 

1 The duty of society to inflict capital punishment on the murderer has 
been maintained on the ground of the Divine command to that effect, said 
to have been given to Noah, and thus to be binding on all his posterity. 
(Genesis ix. 5. ) My own belief — founded on a careful examination of the 
Hebrew text — is, that the human murderer is not referred to m this pre- 
cept, but that it simply requires the slaying of the beast that should cause 
the death of a man, — a precaution which was liable to be neglected in a rude 
state of society, an< was among the special enactments of the Mosaic law. 
i Exodus xxi. 28. ) If, however, the common interpretation be retained, 
the precept requires the shedding of the murderer's blood by the brother or 
nearest kinsman of the murdered man, and is not obeyed by giving up the 
murderer to the galhios and the public executioner. Moreover, the same 



miL UtLA.ltt-t-JL£iALil 1. 



But if with the dangerous classes of men the dread 
of capital punishment is a dissuasive from crimes of 
violence, so that the number of murders is less, and 
the lives of peaceable citizens are safer, than were 
murder liable to some milder penalty, then it is the 
undoubted right of the public to confiscate the mur- 
derer's right to life, and thus to sacrifice the smaller 
number of comparatively worthless lives for the secu- 
rity of the larger number of lives that may be valuable 
to the community. Or again if, by the profligate use 
of the pardoning power, the murderer sentenced to 
perpetual imprisonment will probably be let loose 
upon society unreformed, and with passions which 
may lead to the repetition of his crime, it is immeas- 
urably more fitting that he be killed, than that he 
be preserved to do farther mischief. Yet again, if 
there be in the death-penalty for murder an educa- 
tional force, — if by means of it each new generation 
is trained in the greater reverence for human life, 
and the greater detestation and horror of the crime 
by which it is destroyed, — then is capital punish- 
ment to be retained as a means of preserving an in- 
calculably greater number of lives than it sacrifices. 
On these grounds, though in opposition to early and 
strong conviction, we are constrained to express the 

mnas ol precepts prescribes an abstinence from the natural juices of annual 
food, which would require an entire revolution in our shambles, kitchens, 
and tables. If these precepts were Divine commandments for men of all 
times, they should be obeyed in full; but there is the grossest inconsistency 
and absurdity in holding only a pori ion of one of them sacred, and ignor 
inc all the rest. 



68 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

belief that, in our time and country, the capital pun- 
ishment of the murderer is needed for the security of 
the public, and is justified as a life-saving measure. 

In enforced military service, also, legal authcrity 
exposes the lives of a portion of the citizens for the 
security of the greater number. It is an unquestion- 
able truth that, in its moral affinities, war is gen- 
erated by evil, is allied to numberless forms of evil, 
and has a countless progeny of evil. But it is equally 
true that war will recur at not unfrequent intervals, 
so long as the moral evils from which it springs 
remain unreformed. Such are the complications of 
international affairs, that the most righteous and 
pacific policy may not always shield a people from 
hostile aggressions ; while insurrection, sedition, and 
civil war may result not only from governmental 
oppression, but from the most salutary measures of 
reform and progress. In such cases, self-defence on 
the part of the nation or the government assailed, is 
a right and an obligation, due even in the interest 
of human life, and still more, in behalf of interests 
more precious than life. Moreover, even in a War of 
unprovoked aggression, the aggressive nation does 
not forfeit the right of self-defence by the unprin- 
cipled ambition of its rulers, and, war once declared, 
its vigorous pursuit may be the only mode of averting 
lisaster or ruin. Thus war, though always involving 
atrocious wrong on the part of its promoters and 
abettors, becomes to the nations involved in it a 
necessitv for which they are compelled to provide. 



RIGHT TO LIBERTY. 69 

This provision may, in some cases, be made by volun- 
tary enlistment ; but in most civilized countries, it 
has been found necessary to fill and recruit the army 
by conscription, thus forcibly endangering the lives of 
a portion of the citizens, in order to a;ert from the 
soil and the homes of the people at large the worse 
calamities of invasion, devastation, and conquest. So 
far as this is necessary, it is undoubtedly right, and 
the lives thus sacrificed are justly due to the safety 
and well-being of the whole people. But in making 
this admission, we would say, without abatement 01 
qualification, that war is essentially inhuman, bar- 
barous, and opposed to and by the principles and 
spirit of Christianity, and that should the world ever 
be thoroughly Christianized, the ages when war was 
possible, will be looked back upon with the same 
horror with which we now regard cannibalism. 

Associated with the right to life, and essential to 
its full enjoyment, is the right to liberty. This in- 
cludes the right to ditect one's own employments and 
recreations, to divide and use his time as may seem to 
him good, to go where he pleases, to bestow his vote 
or his influence in public affairs as he thinks best, and 
to express his own opinions orally, in writing, or 
through the press, without hindrance or molestation. 
These several rights belong equally to all ; but as they 
cannot be exercised in full without mutual interference 
and annoyance, the common sense of mankind, utter- 
ing itself through law, permits each individual to 
enjoy them only so far as he can consistently with 



10 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the freedom, comfort, and well-being of his fellow 
citizens. 

Slavery is so nearly extirpated from Christendom, 
that it is superfluous to enter into the controversy, 
which a few years ago no treatise on Moral Philos- 
ophy could have evaded. It was defended only by 
patent sophistry, and its advocates argued from the 
fact to the right, inventing the latter to sustain the 
former. 

Personal liberty is legally and rightfully re- 
stricted in the case of minors, on the ground of their 
immature judgment and discretion, of their natural 
state of dependence on parents, and of their usual 
abode under the parental roof. The age of mature 
discretion varies very widely, not only in different 
races, but among different individuals of the same 
race, as does also the period of emancipation from the 
controlling influence of parents, and of an indepen- 
dent and self-sustaining condition in life. But, as it 
is impossible for government to institute special in- 
quiries in the case of each individual, and as, were 
this possible, there would be indefinite room for 
favoritism and invidious distinctions, there is an in- 
trinsic fitness in fixing an average age at which pa- 
rental or ^wasz-parental tutelage shall cease, and after 
which the man shall have full and sole responsibility 
for his own acts. It is perfectly obvious that the lib- 
erty of the insane and feeble-minded ought to be re- 
stricted so far as is necessary for their own safety and 
for that of others. There is, also, in most communi- 



LIMITATIONS OF FREEDOM. 71 

ties, a provision by which notorious spendthrifts may 
be put under guardianship, and thus restrained in 
what might be claimed as their rightful disposal of 
their own property. This may be justified on the 
ground that, by persistent wastefulness, they may 
throw upon the public the charge of their own sup- 
port and that of their families. 

Imprisonment is, on the part of society, a meas- 
ure, not of revenge, but of self-defence. The design 
of this mode of punishment is, first, to prevent the 
speedy repetition of the crime on the part of the per- 
son punished ; secondly, so to work, either upon his 
moral nature by confinement, labor, and instruction, 
or at the worst, on his fears, by the dread of repeated 
and longer restraint, that he may abstain from crime 
in future ; and lastly, to deter those who might other- 
wise be tempted to crime from exposing themselves 
to its penal consequences. As regards the prisoner, 
he has justly forfeited the right to liberty, by em- 
ploying it in aggression on the rights of others. 

As regards acts not in themselves wrong, the 
freedom of the individual is rightfully restrained, 
when it would interfere with the health, comfort, or 
lawful pursuits of his neighbors. Thus no man has 
the right, either legal or moral, to establish, in an in- 
habited vicinage, a trade or manufacture which con- 
fessedly poisons the air or the water in his neighbor- 
hood ; nor has one a moral right (even if there are 
technical difficulties in the way of declaring his call- 
ing a nuisance), to annoy his neighbors by an avoca 



72 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

tion grossly offensive or intolerably noisy. It is on 
this ground alone that legislation with reference to 
the Lord's day can be justified. Christians have no 
right to impose upon Jews, Pagans, or infidels, entire 
cessation of labor, business, or recreation on Sunday, 
and the attempt at coercive measures of this kind can 
only react to the damage of the cause in which they 
are instituted. But if the majority of the people be- 
lieve it their duty to observe the first day of the week 
as a day of rest and devotion, they have a right to 
be protected in its observance by the suppression of 
such kinds, degrees, and displays of labor and recrea- 
tion as would essentially interfere with their employ- 
ment of the day for its sacred uses. 

2. The right to property is an inevitable corollary 
from the right to liberty ; for this implies freedom to 
labor at one's will, and to what purpose can a man 
labor, unless he can make the fruit of his labor his 
own ? All property, except land, has been created 
by labor. Except where slavery is legalized, it is ad- 
mitted that the laborer owns the value he creates. 
If it be an article made or produced wholly by him- 
self, it is his to keep, to use, to give, or to sell. If 
his labor be bestowed on materials not his own, or if 
he be one of a body of workmen, he is entitled to a 
fair equivalent for the labor he contributes. 

Property in land, no doubt, originated in labor. 
A man was deemed the proprietor of so much ground 
as he tilled. In a sparse population there could have 
been no danger of mutual interference ; and in every 



RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 78 

country, governments must have been instituted be- 
fore there was a sufficiently close occupation of the 
soil to occasion collisions and conflicts among the oc- 
cupants. The governments of the early ages, in gen- 
eral, confirmed the titles founded in productive occu- 
pancy, and treated the unoccupied land as the prop- 
erty of the state, either to be held in common, to be 
ceded to individual owners in reward of loyalty or 
services, or to be sold on the public account. 

It is manifest that the security of property is 
essential to civilization and progress. Men would 
labor only for the needs of the day, if they could not 
retain and enjoy the fruits of their labor ; nor would 
they be at pains to invent or actualize industrial im- 
provements of any kind, if they had no permanent 
interest in the results of such improvements. Then, 
too, if there were no protection for property, there 
could be no accumulation of capital, and without cap- 
ital there could be no enterprise, no combined indus- 
tries, no expenditure in faith of a remote, yet certain 
profit. Nor yet can the ends of a progressive civili- 
zation be answered by a community of goods and 
gains. Wherever this experiment has been tried, it 
has been attended by a decline of industrial en- 
3rgy and capacity ; and where there has not been ab- 
solute failure, there have been apathy, stupidity, and 
a decreasing standard of intelligence. In fine, there 
is in man's bodily and mental powers a certain vis 
inertice y which can be efficiently aroused only by the 
stimulus of personal interest in the results of indus- 
try, ingenuity, and prudence. 



74 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

The right of property implies the right of the 
owner, while he lives, to hold, enjoy, or dispose of 
his possessions in such way as may please him. But 
his ownership necessarily ceases at death ; and what 
was his becomes rightfully the property of the public. 
Yet in all civilized countries, it has been deemed 
fitting that the owner should have the liberty — with 
certain restrictions — of dictating the disposal of his 
property after his death, and also that, unless alien- 
ated by his will (and in some countries his will not- 
withstanding), his property should pass to his family 
or his nearest kindred. It is believed that it would 
discourage industry and enfeeble enterprise were 
their earnings to be treated as public property on the 
death of the owner; and that, on the other hand, 
men are most surely trained to and preserved in 
habits of diligence and thrift, either by the power of 
directing the disposal of their property after death, 
or by the certainty that they can thereby benefit 
those whom they hold in the dearest regard. Laws 
with* reference to wills and to the succession of 
estates are not, then, limitations of the rights of pri- 
vate property, but a directory as to what is dttaaed 
the best mode of disposing of such property as from 
time to time accrues to the public. 

The law limits the right of property by appro- 
priating to public uses such portions of it as are 
needed for the maintenance, convenience, and well- 
being of the body politic. This is done, in the first 
place, by taxation, which — in order to be just — 



RIGHT OF PROPERTY LIMITED. 75 

must be equitable in its mode of assessment, and not 
excessive in amount. As to the modes of assessment, 
it is obvious that a system which lightens the bur- 
den upon the rich, and thus presses the more heavily 
on the poor (as would be the case were a revenue 
raised on the necessaries of life, while luxuries were 
left free), cannot be justified. On the other hand, it 
may be maintained that the rate of taxation might 
fairly increase with the amount of property ; for a 
very large proportion of the machinery of govern- 
ment is designed for the protection of property, and 
the more property an individual has, the less capable 
is he of protecting his various interests by his own 
personal care, and the more is he in need of well-de- 
vised and faithfully executed laws. Taxation exces- 
sive in amount is simply legalized theft. Sinecures, 
supernumerary offices, needless and costly formalities 
in the transaction of public business, journeys and 
festivities at the public charge, buildings designed for 
ostentation rather than for use, have been so long tol- 
erated in the municipal, state, and national adminis- 
trations, that they may seem inseparable from our 
system of government ; but they imply gross dishon- 
esty on the part of large numbers of our public ser- 
vants, and guilty complicity in it on the part of many 
more. Under a system of direct taxation, assess- 
ments can be more equitably made, and their expen- 
diture will be more carefully watched, than in the case 
of indirect taxation ; while the latter method is more 
likely to find favor with those who hold or seek pub- 



76 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

lie office, as encouraging a larger freedom of expen- 
diture, and supporting a larger number of needless 
functionaries at the public cost. 

The law, also, authorizes the appropriation ot 
specific portions of property to public uses, as 
for streets, roads, aqueducts, and public grounds, and 
even in aid of private enterprises in which the com- 
munity has a beneficial interest, as of canals, bridges, 
and railways. This is necessary, and therefore right. 
It is obvious that, but for this, the most essential 
facilities and improvements might be prevented, or 
burdened with unreasonable costs, by the obstinacy or 
cupidity of individuals. The conditions under which 
such use of private property is justified are, that the 
improvement proposed be for the general good, that a 
fair compensation be given for the property taken, 
and that as to both these points, in case of a differ- 
ence of opinion, the ultimate appeal shall be to an 
impartial tribunal or arbitration. 

3. The right to reputation. Every man has a 
right to the reputation he deserves, and is under 
obligation to respect that right in every other man. 
This obligation is violated, not only by the fabrica- 
tion of slander, but equally by its repetition, unless 
the person who repeats it knows it to be true, and 
also by silence and seeming acquiescence in an in- 
jurious report, if one knows or believes it to be false. 
But has a man a right to a better reputation than he 
deserves ? Certainly not, in a moral point of view ; 



EIGHT TO REPUTATION. 77 

and if men could be generally known to be what they 
are, few would fail to become what they would wish 
to seem. Yet the law admits the truth of a slander- 
ous charge in justification of the slanderer, only when 
it can be shown that the knowledge of the truth is for 
the public benefit. There are good reasons for this 
attitude of the law, without reference to any supposed 
rights of the justly accused party. There is, in many 
instances, room for a reasonable doubt as to evil re- 
ports that seem authentic, and in many more in- 
stances there may be extenuating circumstances which 
form a part of the case, though almost never, of the 
report. Then, too, the family and kindred of the 
person defamed may incur, through true, yet useless 
reports to his discredit, shame, annoyance, and dam- 
age, which they do not merit. Evil reports, also, 
even if true, disturb the peace of the community, and 
often provoke violent retaliation. The wanton cir- 
culation of them, therefore, if a luxury to him who 
gives them currency, is a luxury indulged at the ex- 
pense of the public, and he ought to be held liable 
for all that it may cost. Finally, and above all, thu 
slanderer becomes a nuisance to the community, not 
only by his reports of real or imagined wrong and 
evil, but by the degradation of his own character, 
^vhich can hardly remain above the level of his social 
intercourse. 

By the law, defamation and libel are, very justly, 
Uable both to criminal prosecution, as offences against 



78 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the public, and to action for damages by civil pro- 
cess, on the obvious ground that the injury of a 
man's character tends to impair his success in busi- 
ness, his pecuniary credit, and his comfortable enjoy- 
ment of his property. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MOTIVE, PASSION, AND HABIT. 

HHHE appetites, desires, and affections are, as has 
been said, the proximate motives of action. 
The perception of expediency and the sense of right 
act, not independently of these motives, but upon 
them and through them, checking some, stimulating 
others. Thus they, both, restrain the appetites, the 
former, so far as prudence requires ; the latter, in sub- 
serviency to the more noble elements of character. 
The former directs the desires toward worthy, but 
earthly objects ; the latter works most efficiently 
through the benevolent affections, as exercised toward 
God and man. 

Exterior motives are of a secondary order, acting 
not directly upon the will, but influencing it indirectly, 
through the springs of action, or through the prin- 
ciples which direct and govern them. 

The action of exterior motives takes place in 
three different ways. 1. When they are in harmony 
with any predominant appetite, desire, or affection, 
they at once intensify it, and prompt acts by which 
it may be gratified. Thus, for instance, a sump- 
tuously spread table gives the epicure a keener ap- 
petite, and invites him to its free indulgence. The 



80 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

opportunity of a potentially lucrative, though hazard- 
ous investment, excites the cupidity of the man who 
prizes money above all things else, and tempts him to 
incur the doubtful risk. The presence of the object 
of love or hatred adds strength to the affection, and 
induces expressions or acts of kindness or malevolence, 
2. An exterior motive opposed to the predominant 
spring of action often starts that spring into vigor- 
ous and decisive activity, and makes it thenceforth 
stronger and more imperative. It is thus that remon- 
strances, obstacles, and interposing difficulties not in- 
frequently render sensual passion more rabid ; while 
temptation, by the acts of resistance which it elicits, 
nourishes the virtue it assails. 3. An exterior motive 
may have a sufficient stress and cogency to call forth 
into energetic action some appetite, desire, or affection 
previously dormant or feeble, thus to repress the 
activity of those which before held sway, and so to 
produce a fundamental change in the character. In 
this way the sudden presentation of vice, hi attractive 
forms, may give paramount sway to passions which 
had previously shown no signs of mastery; and, in 
like manner, a signal experience of peril, calamity, 
deliverance, or unexpected joy may call forth the 
religious affections, and invest them with enduring 
supremacy over a soul previously surrendered to appe- 
tite, inferior desires, or meaner loves. 

An undue influence in the formation or change 
of character is often ascribed to exterior motives. 
They are oftener the consequence than the cause of 



CHRISTIAN MOTIVES. 81 

character. Men, in general, exercise more power over 
their surroundings, than their surroundings over them. 
A very large proportion of the circumstances which 
seem to have a decisive influence upon us, are of our 
own choice, and we might — had we so willed — have 
chosen their opposites. A virtuous person seldom 
nnds it necessary to breathe a vicious atmosphere. A 
willingness to be tempted is commonly the antecedent 
condition to one's being led into temptation. Sym- 
pathy, example, and social influences are second in 
their power, whether for good or for evil, to no other 
class of exterior motives ; and there are few who can- 
not choose their own society, and who do not choose 
it in accordance with their elective affinities. It is 
true, indeed, that the choice of companions of doubtful 
virtue is often the first outward sign of vicious pro- 
clivities ; while a tenacious adherence to the society 
of the most worthy not infrequently precedes any 
very conspicuous development of personal excellence ; 
but in either case the choice of friends indicates the 
predominant springs of action, and the direction in 
which the character has begun to grow. So far then 
is man from being under the irresistible control of 
motives from without, that these motives are in great 
part the results and the tokens of his own voluntary 
agency. 

Christianity justly claims preeminence, not only 
as a source of knowledge as to the right, but equally 
as presenting the most influential and persistent 
motives to right conduct. These motives we have in 



&2 MOBAL PHILOSOPHY. 

its endearing and winning manifestation of the Di- 
vine fatherhood by Jesus Christ ; in his own sacri- 
fice, death, and undying love for man ; in the assur- 
ance of forgiveness for past wrongs and omissions, 
without which there could be little courage for future 
well-doing; in the promise of Divine aid in every 
right purpose and worthy endeavor ; in the certainty 
of a righteous retribution in the life to come ; and in 
institutions and observances designed and adapted to 
perpetuate the memory of the salient facts, and to 
renew at frequent intervals the recognition of the 
essential truths, which give the religion its name and 
character. The desires and affections, stimulated and 
directed by these motives, are incapable of being per- 
verted to evil, while desires with lower aims and 
affections for inferior objects are always liable to be 
thus perverted. These religious motives, too, resting 
on the Infinite and the Eternal, are of inexhaustible 
power ; if felt at all, they must of necessity be felt 
more strongly than all other motives ; and they can- 
not fail to be adequate to any stress of need, tempta- 
tion, or trial. 

Passion implies a passive state, — a condition in 
which the will yields without resistance to some 
dominant appetite, desire, or affection, under whose 
imperious reign reason is silenced, considerations of 
expediency and of right suppressed, and exterior 
counteracting motives neutralized. It resembles in- 
santy in the decree in which the actions induced by 



PASSION 83 

it are the results of unreasoning impulse, and in the 
unreal and distorted views which it presents of per- 
sons, objects, and events. It differs from insanity, 
mainly in its being a self -induced madness, for which, 
as for drunkenness, the sufferer is morally account- 
able, and in yielding to which, as in drunkenness, he, 
by suffering his will to pass beyond the control of 
reason, makes himself responsible, both legally and 
morally, for whatever crimes or wrongs he commits in 
this state of mental alienation. 

There is no appetite, desire, or affection which 
may not become a passion, and there is no passion 
which does not impair the sense of right, and inter- 
fere with the discharge of duty. The appetites, the 
lower desires, the malevolent affections, and, not 
infrequently, love, when they become passions, have 
their issues in vice and crime. The nobler desires and 
affections when made passions, may not lead to pos- 
itive evil, but can hardly fail to derange the fitting 
order of life, and to result in the dereliction of some of 
its essential duties. Thus, the passion for knowledge 
may render one indifferent to his social and religious 
obligations. Philanthropy, when a passion, overlooks 
nearer for more remote claims of duty, and is very 
prone to omit self -discipline and self-culture in its zeal 
for world-embracing charities. Even the religious 
affections, when they assume the character of pas- 
sions, either, on the one hand, are kindled into wild 
fanaticism, or, on the other, lapse into a self-absorbed 
quietism, which forgets outside duties in the luxury of 



84 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

devout contemplation ; and though eithei of these is 
to be immeasurably preferred to indifference, they 
both are as immeasurably inferior to that piety, 
equally fervent and rational, which neglects neither 
man for God, nor God for man, and which remains 
mindful of all human and earthly relations, fitnesses, 
and duties, while at the same time it retains its hold 
of faith, hope, and habitual communion, on the higher 
life. 

Habit also involves the suspension of reason and 
motive in the performance of individual acts ; but it 
differs from passion in that its acts were in the b&- 
ginning prompted by reason and motive. Indeed, it 
may be plausibly maintained that in each habitual act 
there is a virtual remembrance — a recollection too 
transient to be itself remembered — of the reasoning 
or motive which induced the first act of the series. In 
some cases the habitual act is performed, as it is said, 
unconsciously, certainly with a consciousness so evan- 
escent as to leave no trace of itself. In other cases the 
act is performed consciously, but as by a felt necessity, 
in consequence of an uneasy sensation — analogous to 
hunger and thirst — which can be allayed in this way 
only. Under this last head we may class, in the first 
j lace, habits of criminal indulgence, including the in- 
dulgence of morbid and depraved appetite; secondly, 
many of those morally indifferent habits, which con- 
stitute a large portion of a regular and systematic life , 
and thirdly, habits of virtuous conduct, of industry, 
of punctuality, of charity. 



BENEFICENT AGENCY OF HABIT. 85 

Habit bears a most momentous part in the for- 
mation and growth of character, whether for evil or 
for good. It is in the easy and rapid formation of 
habit that lies the imminent peril of single acts of 
vicious indulgence. The first act is performed with 
Lhe determination that it shall be the last of its kind. 
But of all examples one's own is that which he is 
most prone to follow, and of all bad examples one's 
own is the most dangerous. The precedent once 
established, there is the strongest temptation to repeat 
it, still with a conscious power of self-control, and 
with the resolution to limit the degree and to arrest 
the course of indulgence, so as to evade the ultimate 
disgrace and ruin to which it tends. But before the 
pre-determined limit is reached, the indulgence has 
become a habit ; its suspension is painful ; its contin- 
uance or renewal seems essential to comfortable exist- 
ence ; and even in those ultimate stages when its very 
pleasure has lapsed into satiety, and then into wretch- 
edness, its discontinuance threatens still greater 
wretchedness, because the craving is even more in- 
tense when the enjoyment has ceased. 

The beneficent agency of habit no less deserves 
emphatic notice. Its office in practical morality is 
analogous to that of labor-saving inventions in the 
various departments of industry. A machine by 
which ten men can do the work that has been done 
by thirty, disengages the twenty for new modes of 
productive labor, and thus augments the products of 
Industry and the comfort of the community. A good 



86 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

habit is a labor-saving instrument. The cultivating 
of any specific virtue to such a degree that it shall 
become an inseparable and enduring element of the 
character demands, at the outset, vigilance, self-disci 
pline, and, not infrequently, strenuous effort. But 
when the exercise of that virtue has become habitual, 
and therefore natural, easy, and essential to one's con- 
scious well being, it ceases to task the energies ; it no 
longer requires constant watchfulness ; its occasions 
are met spontaneously by the appropriate dispositions 
and acts. The powers which have been employed in 
its culture are thus set free for the acquisition of yet 
other virtues, and the formation of other good habits. 
Herein lies the secret of progressive goodness, of an 
ever nearer approach to a perfect standard of char- 
acter. The primal virtues are first made habits of 
the unceasing consciousness and of the daily life, and 
the moral power no longer needed for these is then 
employed in the cultivation of the finer traits of su- 
perior excellence, — the shaping of the delicate lines, 
roundings, and proportions, which constitute " the 
beauty of holiness," the symmetry and grace of char 
acter that win not only abounding respect and confi- 
dence, but universal admiration and love. 

What has been said of habit, is true not only as to 
outward acts, but equally as to wonted directions and 
currents of thought, study, reflection, and reverie. 
It is mainly through successive stages of habit that 
the mind grows in its power of application, research, 
and invention. It is thus that the spirit of devotion 



HABITS OF THOUGHT. 87 

is trained to ever clearer realization of sacred truth and 
a more fervent love and piety. It is thus that minds 
of good native capacity lose their apprehensive facul- 
ties and their working power; and thus, also, that 
moral corruption often, no doubt, takes place before 
the evil desires cherished within find the opportunity 
of actualizing themselves in a depraved life. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

VIRTUES, AND THE VIRTUES. 

rpHE term virtue is employed in various senses, 
which, though they cover a wide range, are yet 
very closely allied to one another, and to the initial 
conception in which they all have birth. Its primitive 
signification, as its structure J indicates, is manliness. 
Now what preeminently distinguishes, not so much 
the human race from the lower animals, as the full- 
grown and strong man from the feebler members of 
his own race, is the power of resolute, strenuous, per- 
severing conflict and resistance. It is the part of 
a man worthy of the name to maintain his own posi- 
tion, to hold his ground against all invaders, to show 
a firm front against all hostile force, and to prefer 
death to conquest. All this is implied in the Greek 
and Roman idea of virtue, and is included in the Latin 
virtus, when it is used with reference to military 
transactions, so that its earliest meaning was, simply, 

1 Latin, virtus, from vir, which denotes not, like homo, simply a human 
being, but a man endowed with all appropriate manly attributes, and comes 
from the same root with vis, strength. The Greek synonyme of virtus, 
iperri, is derived from "Apr;?, the god of war, who in the heroic days of 
Greece was the ideal man, the standard of human excellence, and whos* 
name some lexicographers regard — as it seems to me, somewhat fanci- 
fully — as allied through its root to avrjp, which bears about the same rela- 
tion to avdpioirot that vir bears to homo. 



VIRTUE. 89 

military prowess. But with the growth of ethical 
philosophy, and especially with the cultivation by the 
Stoics of the sterner and hardier traits of moral ex- 
cellence, men learned that there was open to them a 
more perilous battle-ground, a severer conflict, and a 
aaore glorious victory, than in mere physical warfare, 
— that there was a higher type of manliness in self 
eonquest, in the resistance and subdual of appetite 
and passion, in the maintenance of integrity and 
purity under intense temptation and amidst vicious 
surroundings, than in the proudest achievements of 
military valour. Virtue thus came to mean, not 
moral goodness in itself considered, but goodness mil- 
itant and triumphant. 1 

But words which have a complex signification 
always tend to slough off a part of their meaning ; 
and, especially, words that denote a state or property, 
together with its mode of growth or of manifestation, 
are prone to drop the latter, even though it may have 
given them root and form. Thus the term virtue is 

1 In the languages which have inherited or adopted the Latin virtus, 
It retains its original signification, with one striking exception, which yet 
is perhaps an exception in appearance rather than in reality. In the Ita- 
lian, virtu is employed to signify taste, and virtuoso, which may denote a 
virtuous man, oftener means a collector of objects of taste. We have here 
an historical landmark. There was a period when, under civil despotism, 
the old Roman manhood had entirely died out on its native soil, while 
ecclesiastical corruption rendered the nobler idea of Christian manhood 
effete; and then the highest type of manhood that remained was the cul- 
ture of those refined sensibilities, those ornamental arts, and that keen 
sense of the beautiful, in which Italy as far surpassed other lands, as it was 
for centuries inferior to them in physical braverv and in moral rectitude 



90 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

often used to denote the qualities that constitute 
human excellence, without direct reference to the con- 
flict with evil, whence it gets its name, and in which 
those qualities have their surest growth and most con- 
spicuous manifestation. There is still, however, a 
tacit reference to temptation and conflict in our use of 
the term. Though we employ it to denote good 
ness that has stood no very severe test, we use it 
only where such a test may be regarded as possible. 
Though we call a man virtuous who has been shielded 
from all corrupt examples and influences, and has had 
no inducements to be otherwise than good, we do not 
apply the epithet to the little child who cannot by 
any possibility have been exposed to temptation. 
Nor yet would we apply it to the perfect purity and 
holiness of the Supreme Being, who " cannot be 
tempted with evil." 

Virtue then, in its more usual sense at the present 
time, denotes conduct in accordance with the right, 
or with the fitness of things, on the part of one who has 
the power to do otherwise. But in this sense there 
are few, if any, perfectly virtuous men. There are, 
perhaps, none who are equally sensitive to all that the 
right requires, and it is often the deficiencies of a char- 
acter that give it its reputation for distinguished excel- 
lence in some one form of virtue, the vigilance, self- 
discipline, and effort which might have sustained the 
character in a well-balanced mediocrity being so con- 
centrated upon some single department of duty as to 
excite high admiration and extended praise. There 



VIRTUE AND PIETY. 91 

may be a deficient sensitiveness to some classes of obli- 
gations, while yet there is no willing or conscious viola- 
tion of the right, and in such cases the character must 
be regarded as virtuous. But if in any one depart- 
ment of duty a person is consciously false to his sense 
of rignt, even though in all other respects he conforms 
to the right, he cannot be deemed virtuous, nor can 
.there be any good ground for assurance that he may 
not, with sufficient inducement, violate the very obli- 
gations which he now holds in the most faithful re- 
gard. This is what is meant by that saying of St. 
James, " Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and 
yet offend in one point, is guilty of all," — not that 
he who commits a single offence through inadvertency 
or sudden temptation, is thus guilty; but he who 
willingly and deliberately violates the right as to 
matters in which he is the most strongly tempted to 
wrong and evil, shows an indifference to the right 
which will lead him to observe it only so long and so 
far as he finds it convenient and easy so to do. 

Here we are naturally led to inquire whether there is 
any essential connection between virtue and piety, 
— between the faithful discharge of the common 
duties of life and loving loyalty toward the Supreme 
Being. On this subject extreme opinions have been 
held, sceptics and unbelievers, on the one side, Chris- 
tians with a leaven of antinomianism on the other, 
maintaining the entire independence of virtue on 
piety ; while Christians of the opposite tendency have 
represented them, in spite of ample evidence to the 



92 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

contrary, as inseparable. We shall find, on examina- 
tion, that they are separable and independent, yet 
auxiliary each to the other. Virtue is conduct in ac- 
cordance with the right, and we have seen that right 
and wrong, as moral distinctions, depend not on the 
Divine nature, will or law, 1 but on the inherent, 
necessary conditions of being. The atheist cannot 
escape or disown them. Whatever exists — no mat- 
ter how it came into being — must needs have its due 
place, affinities, adaptations, and uses. An intelligent 
dweller among the things that are, cannot but know 
something of their fitnesses and harmonies, and so far 
as he acts upon them cannot but feel the obligation 
to recognize their fitnesses, and thus to create or re- 
store their harmonies. Even to the atheist, vice is a 
violation of fitnesses which he knows or may know. 
It is opposed to his conscientious judgment. He has 
with regard to it an inevitable sense of wrong. We 
can, therefore, conceive of an atheist's being rigidly 
virtuous, and that on principle. Though among the 
ancient Stoics there were some eminently devout men, 
there were others, men of impregnable virtue, whose 

1 It is obviously on this ground alone th&e we can affirm moral attributes 
of the Supreme Being. When we say that he is perfectly just, pure, holy, 
beneficent, we recognize a standard of judgment logically independent of 
his nature. We mean that the fitness which the human conscience recog 
nizes as its only standard of right, is the law which he has elected for his 
own administration of the universe. Could we conceive of omnipotence 
not recognizing this law, the decrees and acts of such a being would not be 
necessarily right. Omnipotence cannot make that which is fitting wrong, 
or that which is unfitting right. God's decrees and acts are not right ba- 
cause they are his, but his because they are right. 



VIRTUE AND PIETY. 93 

theology was too vague and meagre to furnish either 
ground or nourishment for piety. While, therefore, 
in the mutual and reciprocal fitnesses that pervade 
the universe we find demonstrative evidence of the 
being, unity, and moral perfectness of the Creator, we 
are constrained to acknowledge the possibility of these 
fitnesses being recognized in the conduct of life by 
those who do not follow them out to the great truths 
of theology to which they point and lead. 

But, on the other hand, where there is a clear 
knowledge of, or an undo ub ting belief in the being 
and providence of God, and especially for persons 
who receive Christianity as a revelation of the truth, 
though, as an affection, piety is independent of virtue, 
the duties of piety are an essential part of virtue. 
If God is, we stand in definable relations to Him, and 
those relations are made definite through Christianity. 
Those relations have their fitnesses, and we see not 
how he can be a thoroughly virtuous man, who, dis- 
cerning these fitnesses with the understanding, fails 
to recognize them in conduct. Conscience can take 
cognizance only of the fitnesses which the individual 
man knows or believes ; but it does take cognizance 
of all the fitnesses which he knows or believes. Virtue 
may coexist with a very low standard of emotional 
piety ; but it cannot coexist, in one who believes the 
truths of religion, with blasphemy, irreverence, or the 
conscious violation or neglect of religious obligations. 
He who is willingly false to his relations with the 
Supreme Being, needs only adequate temptation to 



94 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

make him false to his human relations, and to the fit- 
nesses of his daily life. Moreover, while, as we have 
said, virtue may exist where there is but little emo- 
tional piety, virtue can hardly fail to cherish piety. 
Loyalty of conduct deepens loyalty of spirit , obedience 
nourishes love ; he who faithfully does the will of God 
can hardly fail to become worshipful and devout ; and 
while men are more frequently led by emotional piety 
to virtue, there can be no doubt that with many the 
process is reversed, and virtue leads to emotional 
piety. Then again, we have seen that religion sup- 
plies the most efficient of all motives to a virtuous 
life, — motives adequate to a stress of temptation and 
trial which suffices to overpower and neutralize all 
inferior motives. 

Virtue is one and indivisible in its principle and 
essence, yet in its external manifestations pre- 
senting widely different aspects, and eliciting a 
corresponding diversity in specific traits of character. 
Thus, though intrinsic fitness be equally the rule of 
conduct at a pleasure-party and by a pauper's bed- 
side, the conduct of the virtuous man will be widely 
different on these two occasions ; and not only so, but 
with the same purpose of fidelity to what is fitting and 
right, his dispositions, aims, and endeavors on these 
two occasions will have little or nothing in common 
except the one pervading purpose. Hence virtue may 
under different forms assume various names, and may 
thus be broken up into separate virtues. These are 



THE VIRTUES. % 

many or few, according as we distribute in smaller or 
larger groups the occasions for virtuous conduct, oi 
analyze with greater or less minuteness the senti- 
ments and dispositions from which it proceeds. 

The cardinal 1 virtues are the Am#e-virtues, those 
on which the character hinges or turns, those, the pos- 
session of all which, would constitute a virtuous char- 
acter, while the absence of any one of them would 
justly forfeit for a man the epithet virtuous. There 
are other less salient and essential qualities — minor 
virtues — the possession of which adds to the symme- 
try, beauty, and efficiency of the character, but which 
one may lack, and yet none the less deserve to be re- 
garded as a virtuous man. Thus, justice is a cardinal 
virtue ; gentleness, one of the lesser rank. 

We propose to adopt as a division of the vir- 
tues one which recognizes four cardinal virtues, cor- 
responding to four classes under which may be com- 
prehended all the fitnesses of man's condition in this 
world, and the duties proceeding from them respect- 
ively. 2 There are fitnesses and duties appertaining, 
first, to one's own being, nature, capacities, and needs ; 
secondly, to his relations to his fellow-beings ; thirdly, 
to his disposition and conduct with reference to ex- 
ternal objects and events beyond his control ; and 
fourthly, to his arrangement, disposal, and use of ob- 
jects under his control. It is difficult to find names 
which in their common use comprehend severally all 
the contents of each of these four divisions ; but yet 

1 From cardo, a hinge. 

8 It is virtuallv Cicero's division in the De Officii*. 



96 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

they are all comprised within the broadest significance 
of the terms Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Or- 
der. Thus employed, Prudence, or providence, in- 
cludes all the duties of self-government and self -cul- 
ture ; Justice denotes all that is due to God and man, 
embracing piety and benevolence ; Fortitude, which 
is but a synonyme for strength, is an appropriate gen- 
eral name for every mode, whether of defiance, resist- 
ance, or endurance, in which man shows himself su- 
perior to his inevitable surroundings ; and Order is 
extended to all subjects in which the question of duty 
is a question of time, place, or measure. 

We can conceive of no right feeling, purpose, 
or action, which does not come under one of 
these heads. It is obvious, too, that these are all 
cardinal virtues, not one of which could be wanting 
or grossly deficient in a virtuous man. For, in the 
first place, he who omits were it only the duties of 
self-culture, and thus leaves himself ignorant of what 
he ought to know, takes upon himself the full burden, 
blame, and penalty of whatever wrong he may com- 
mit in consequence of needless ignorance ; secondly, 
he who is willingly unfaithful in any of his relations 
to God or man, cannot by any possibility be worthy 
of approbation ; nor, thirdly, can he be so, who is the 
slave, not the master, of his surroundings; while, 
fourthly, fitnesses of time, place, and measure are so 
essential to right-doing that the violation of them 
renders what else were right, wrong. 

Moreover, each of these four virtues, if genuine 



THE CARDINAL VIRTUES. 97 

and highly developed, implies the presence of all 
the others. 1. There is a world of wisdom in the 
question asked in the Hebrew Scriptures : " Have all 
the workers of iniquity no knowledge ?" There is in 
all wrong-doing either ignorance, or temporary hal- 
lucination or blindness, and imprudence is but igno- 
rance or delusion carried into action. Did we see 
clearly the certain bearings and consequences of ac- 
tions, we should need no stronger dissuasive from all 
evil, no more cogent motive to every form of virtue. 
2. There is no conceivable duty which may not be 
brought under the head of justice, either to God or 
to man ; for our duties to ourselves are due to God 
who has ordained them, and to man whom we are 
the more able to benefit, the more diligent we are 
in self-government and self-improvement. 3. Our 
wrong-doing of every kind comes from our yielding to 
outward things instead of rising above them ; and 
he who truly lives above the world, can hardly fail to 
do all that is right and good in it. 4. Perfect order 
— the doing of everything in the right time, place, 
and measure — would imply the presence of all the 
virtues, and would include all their work. 

With this explanation we shall use the terms Pru- 
dence, Justice, Fortitude, and Order in the titles 
of the four following chapters, at the same time 
claiming the liberty of employing these words, as we 
shall find it convenient, in the more restricted sense 
which they commonly bear. 



c 



CHAPTER IX. 

PRUDENCE; OR DUTIES TO ONE'S SELF. 

AN there be duties to one's self, which are of 
absolute obligation? Duties are dues, and they 
imply two parties, — one who owes them, and one to 
whom they are due, — the debtor and the creditor. 
But the creditor may, at his will, cancel the debt, and 
release the debtor. In selfward duties, then, why 
may I not, as creditor, release myself as debtor ? 
Why may I not — so long as I violate no obligation 
to others — be, at my own pleasure, idle or indus- 
trious, self-indulgent or abstinent, frivolous or se- 
rious? Why, if life seem burdensome to me, may I 
not relieve myself of the trouble of living ? The 
answer is, that to every object in the universe with 
which I am brought into relation I owe its fit use, 
and that no being in the universe, not even the Om- 
nipotent, can absolve me from this obligation. Now 
my several powers and faculties, with reference to 
my will, are objects on which my volitions take effect, 
and I am bound to will their fit uses, and to abstain 
from thwarting or violating those uses, on the same 
ground on which I am bound to observe and rever- 
ence the fitnesses of objects that form no part of my 
personality. Moreover, this earthly life is, with ref- 



StiLF-PRESER VA TION. 99 

tience to my will, an object on which my volitions 
may take effect ; I learn — if not by unaided reason, 
from the Christian revelation — that my life has its 
fit uses, both in this world and in preparation for a 
higher state of being, and that these uses are often 
best served by the most painful events and experi- 
ences ; and I thus find myself bound to take the ut- 
most care of my life, even when it seems the least 
worth caring for. 

The duties due to one's self are self-preservation, 
the attainment of knowledge, self-control, and moral 
self-culture. 

SECTION I. 

SELF-PBESERVATION. 

The uses of life, both to ourselves, and to otners 
through us, suffice, as we have said, to render its pres- 
ervation a duty, enjoined upon us by the law of fit- 
ness. This duty is violated not only by suicide — 
against which it is useless to reason, for its victims in 
modern Christendom are seldom of sound mind — 
but equally by needless and wanton exposure to peril. 
Such exposure is frequently incurred in reckless feats 
of strength or daring, sometimes consummated in 
immediate death, and still oftener in slower self- 
destruction by disease. There are, no doubt, occa- 
sions when self-preservation must yield to a higher 
duty, and humanity has made no important stage of 
progress without the free sacrifice of many noble 

LofC. 



100 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

lives ; but because it may be a duty to give life in th* 
cause of truth or liberty, it by no means follows that 
one has a right to throw it away for the gratification 
of vanity, for a paltry wager, or to win the fame of 
an accomplished athlete. 

The duty of self-preservation includes, of course, 
a reasonable care for health, without which the uses 
of life are essentially restricted and impaired. Here 
a just mean must be sought and adhered to. There 
is, on the one hand, an excessive care of the body, 
which, if it does not enfeeble the mind, distracts it 
from its true work, and makes the spiritual nature a 
mere slave of the material organism. This solicitude 
is sometimes so excessive as to defeat its own purpose, 
by creating imaginary diseases, and then making them 
real ; and the number is by no means small of those 
who have become chronic invalids solely by the pains 
they have taken not to be so. On the other hand, 
there is a carelessness as to dress and diet, to which 
the strongest constitution must at length yield ; and 
the intense consciousness of strength and vigor, which 
tempts one to deem himself invulnerable, not infre- 
quently is the cause of life-long infirmity and disabil- 
ity. Of the cases of prolonged and enfeebling disease, 
probably more are the result of avoidable than of un- 
avoidable causes, and if we add to these the numerous 
instances in which the failure of health is to be as- 
cribed to hereditary causes which might have been 
avoided, or to defective sanitary arrangements that 
may be laid to the charge of the p-iblic, we have an 



HYGIENIC RULEb. 101 

enormous amount of serviceable life needlessly wasted 
for all purposes of active usefulness ; while for the 
precious examples of patience, resignation, and cheer- 
ful endurance, the infirmities and sufferings incident 
to the most favorable sanitary conditions might have 
been amply sufficient. 

There are, no doubt, such wide diversities of con- 
stitution and temperament that no specific rules of 
self-preservation can be laid down ; and as regards 
diet, sleep, and exercise, habit may render the most 
unlike methods and times equally safe and beneficial. 
But wholesome food in moderate quantity, sleep long 
enough for rest and refreshment, exercise sufficient to 
neutralize the torpifying influence of sedentary pur- 
suits, and these, though not with slavish uniformity, 
yet with a good degree of regularity, may be regarded 
as essential to a sound working condition of body and 
mind. The same may be said of the unstinted use of 
water, which has happily become a necessity of high 
civilization, of pure air, the worth of which as a sani- 
tary agent is practically ignored by the major part of 
our community, and of the direct light of heaven, the 
exclusion of which from dwellings from motives of 
economy, while it may spare carpets and curtains, 
wilts and depresses their owners. These topics are 
inserted in a treatise on ethics, because whatever has 
a bearing on health, and thus on the capacity for use- 
fulness selfward and manward which constitutes the 
whole value of this earthly life, is of grave moral 
significance. If the preservation of life is a duty, 



1U2 . MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

then all hygienic precautions and measures are duties, 
and as such they should be treated by the individual 
moral agent, by parents, guardians, and teachers, and 
by the public at large. 

Self-preservation is endangered by poverty. In 
the lack or precariousness of the means of subsistence, 
the health of the body is liable to suffer , and even 
where there is not absolute want, but a condition 
straitened in the present and doubtful as to the 
future, the mind loses much of its working power, 
and life is deprived of a large portion of its utility. 
Hence the duty of industry and economy on the part 
of those dependent on their own exertions. It is not 
a man's duty to be rich, though he who in acquiring 
wealth takes upon himself its due obligations and 
responsibilities, is a public benefactor ; but it is every 
man's duty to shun poverty, if he can, and he who 
makes or keeps himself poor by his own indolence, 
thriftlessness, or prodigality, commits a sin against 
his own life, which he curtails as to its capacity of 
good, and against society, which has a beneficial in- 
terest in the fully developed life of all its members. 

SECTION II. 
THE ATTAINMENT OF KNOWLEDGE. 

Inasmuch as knowledge, real or supposed, must 
needs precede every act of the will, and as the adap- 
tation of our actions to our purposes depends on the 
accuracy of our knowledge, it is intrinsically fitting 



EDUCATION OF THE SENSES. 103 

that our cognitive powers should be thoroughly 
developed and trained, and diligently employed 
Especially is this fitting, because — as has been al- 
ready shown — it is through knowledge alone that 
we can bring our conduct into conformity with the 
absolute right, and there is nothing within the range 
of our possible knowledge, which may not become in 
Borne way connected with our agency as moral beings. 
It is of prime importance that what we seem to 
mow we know accurately ; and as it is through the 
senses that we acquire our knowledge, not only of the 
outward objects with which we are daily conversant, 
but of other minds than our own, the education 
of the senses is an obvious duty. There are few so 
prolific sources of social evil, injustice, and misery, as 
the falsehood of persons who mean to tell the truth, 
but who see or hear only in part, and supply the de- 
ficiencies of perception by the imagination. In the 
acquisition of knowledge of the highest interest and 
importance this same hindrance is one of the most 
frequent obstacles. The careless eye and the heedless 
ear waste for many minds a large portion of the time 
ostensibly given to serious pursuits, and render their 
growth pitifully slow and scanty as compared with 
their means of culture. The senses may, especially 
in early life, be trained to alertness and precision, so 
that they shall carry to the mind true and full reports 
of what they see and hear ; and it is only by such 
training that the perceptive faculties can accomplish 
the whole work for which they are designed and fitted. 



104 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

There are, also, interior senses, apprehensive pow- 
ers of the mind, which equally crave culture, and 
which depend for their precision and force on careful 
education and diligent use. Mere observation, ex- 
perience, or study, cannot give knowledge that will 
be of any avail. One may have a largely and 
variously stocked memory, and yet be unable to em- 
ploy its contents to his own advantage or to the ben- 
efit of others. Indeed, there are minds that are par- 
alyzed by being overloaded, — by taking in freight 
faster than they have room for it. It is only materials 
which the mind has made its own, incorporated into 
its substance, that it can fully utilize. Knowledge 
must be acted upon by the understanding, the reason, 
the judgment, before it can be transmuted into wis- 
dom, and employed either in the acquisition of new 
truth or in the conduct of life. Mental activity, then, 
is a duty ; for if we are bound to preserve life, by 
parity of reason, we are bound to improve its quality 
and increase its quantity, and this cannot be done 
unless the intellectual powers are strengthened by 
diligent exercise, as well as nourished by the facts and 
truths which are the raw material of wisdom. 

The fit objects of knowledge vary indefinitely 
with one's condition in life. Things in themselves 
trivial or evanescent may, under certain circumstances, 
claim our careful attention and thorough cognizance, 
We ought, on the one hand, to know all we can about 
matters concerning which we must speak or act, and, 
on the other hand, to refrain from voluntarily speak- 



OBJECTS OF KNO WLEDGE. 105 

ing or acting in matters of which we are ignorant. 
Thus our social relations and our daily intercourse 
may render it incumbent on us to obtain for current 
use a large amount of accurate knowledge which is 
not worth our remembering. Then a man's profession, 
stated business, or usual occupation opens a large field 
of knowledge, with which and with its allied provinces 
it is his manifest duty to become conversant to his 
utmost ability ; for the genuineness and value of his 
work must be in a great degree contingent on his 
intelligence. At the same time, every man is bound 
to make his profession worthy of respect ; in failing 
to do so, he wrongs and injures the members of his 
profession collectively ; and no calling can obtain re- 
spect, if those who pursue it show themselves unculti- 
vated and ignorant. Thus far, then, should knowl- 
edge be extended on grounds of practical utility. 
Beyond and above this range, there is an unlimited 
realm of truth, the knowledge of which is inestimably 
precious for the higher culture of the mind and char- 
acter. In this realm, of which only an infinitesimal 
portion can be conquered during an earthly lifetime, 
there is no unfruitful region, — there is no department 
of nature, of psychology, or of social science, through 
which the mind may not be expanded, exalted, ener- 
gized, led into more intimate relations with the Su- 
preme Intelligence, endowed with added power of ben- 
eficent agency. While, therefore, knowledge of things 
as they are, and of their underlying principles and 
laws, so far as we are able to acquire it, is not only a 



106 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

privilege beyond all price, but an absolute duty, there 
are no moral considerations which need direct or limit 
our choice of the themes of research or study. These 
may properly be determined by native or acquired 
proclivity, by opportunity, or by considerations of 
usefulness. Nor, if the love of truth be formed and 
cherished, can it be of any essential importance 
whether this or that portion of truth be pursued or 
neglected during the brief period of our life in this 
world; for, at best, what we leave unattained must 
immeasurably exceed our attainments, and there is an 
eternity before us for what we are compelled to omit 
here. At the same time, the unbounded scope and 
the vast diversity of things knowable and worthy to 
be known are adapted to stimulate self -culture, and 
in that same proportion to invest human life with a 
higher dignity, a larger intrinsic value, and a more 
enduring influence. 



section m. 

SELF-CONTKOL. 

A man must be either self-governed, or under 
a worse government than his own. God governs 
men, only by teaching and helping them to govern 
themselves. Good men, if also wise, seek not, even 
for the highest ends, to control their fellow-men, but, 
so far as they can, to enable and encourage them to ex- 
ercise a due self-control. It is only unwise or bad 



SELF-CONTROL. 107 

men who usurp the government of other wills thaD 
their own. But the individual will is oftener made 
inefficient by passion, than by direct influence from 
other minds. Man, in his normal state, wills either 
what is expedient or what is right. Passion suspends, 
as to its objects, all reference to expediency and 
right, even when there is the clearest knowledge ol 
the tendencies of the acts to which it prompts. Thus 
the sensualist often knows that he is committing sure 
and rapid suicide, yet cannot arrest himself on the 
declivity of certain ruin. The man in whom avarice 
has become a passion is perfectly aware of the com- 
forts and enjoyments which he is sacrificing, yet is as 
little capable of procuring them as if he were a pau- 
per. Anger and revenge not infrequently force men 
to crimes which they know will be no less fatal to 
themselves than to their victims. Now if a man will 
not put and keep himself under the government of 
conscience, it concerns him at least to remain under 
the control of reason, which, if it do not compel him 
to do right, will restrain him within the limits of ex- 
pediency, and thus will insure for him reputation, a 
fair position, and a safe course in life, even though it 
fail of the highest and most enduring good. 

Self-control is easily lost, and is often lost uncon* 
sciously. The first surrender of it is prone to be final 
and lifelong. Indeed, in many cases, the passion 
destined to be dominant has nearly reached the ma- 
turity of its power previously to any outward viola- 
tion of the expedient or the right. Where the re- 



108 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

straining influences of education and surroundings are 
strong, where important interests are at stake, or 
where conscience has not been habitually silenced or 
tampered with, the perilous appetite, desire, or affec- 
tion broods long in the thought, and is so largely 
indulged in reverie and anticipation, that it becomes 
imperious and despotic before it assumes its wonted 
forms of outward manifestation. Hence, the sudden 
infatuation and rapid ruin which we sometimes wit- 
ness, — the cases in which there seems but a single 
step between innocence and deep depravity. Tn truth 
there are many steps ; but until they become precip- 
itous, they are veiled from human sight. 

Self-control, then, in order to be effective, must 
be exercised upon the thoughts and feelings, es- 
pecially upon the imagination, which fills so largely 
with its phantasms and day-dreams our else unoc- 
cupied hours. Let these hours be as few as possible , 
and let them be filled with thoughts which we would 
not blush to utter, with plans which we could actual- 
ize with the approving suffrage of all good men. The 
inward life which would dread expression and ex- 
posure, already puts the outward life in peril ; foi 
passion, thus inwardly nourished and fostered, can 
hardly fail to assume sooner or later the control of 
the conduct and the shaping of the character. Let 
the thoughts be well governed, and the life is emanci- 
pated from passion, and under the control of reason 
and principle. 



MORAL SELF-CULTURE. 109 

SECTION IV. 

MOEAL SELF-CULTURE. 

It is evident that, whatever a man's aims may be, 
the attainment of them depends more upon him- 
self than upon any agency that he can employ. 
If his aim be extended influence, his words and acts 
have simply the force which his character gives them. 
[f his aim be usefulness, his own personality measures 
in part the value of his gifts, and determines entirely 
the worth of his services. If his aim be happiness, 
Ihe more of a man he is, the larger is his capacity of 
enjoyment ; for as a dog gets more enjoyment out of 
life than a zoophyte, and a man than a dog, so does 
the fully and symmetrically developed man exceed in 
receptivity of happiness him whose nature is imper- 
fectly or abnormally developed. Now it is through 
the thorough training and faithful exercise of his 
moral faculties and powers that man is most capable 
of influence, best fitted for usefulness, and endowed 
with the largest capacity for happiness. History 
shows this. The men whose lot (if any but our own) 
we would be willing to assume, have been, without 
an exception, good men. If there are in our respec- 
tive circles those whose position we deem in every 
respect enviable, they are men of preeminent moral 
excellence. We would not take — could we have it — 
the most desirable external position with a damaged 
character. Probably there are few who do not regard 



110 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

a virtuous character as so much to be desired, that in 
yielding to temptation and falling under the yoke of 
vicious habits they still mean to reform and to become 
what they admire. Old men who have led profligate 
lives always bear visible tokens of having forfeited all 
the valuable purposes of life, often confess that their 
whole past has been a mistake, and not infrequently 
bear faithful testimony to the transcendent worth of 
moral goodness. To remain satisfied without this is, 
therefore, a sin against one's own nature, a sacrifice 
of well-being and happiness which no one has a right 
to make, and which no prudent man will make. 

Self -culture in virtue implies and demands reflec- 
tion on duty and on the motives to duty, on one's 
own nature, capacities and liabilities, and on those 
great themes of thought, which by their amplitude 
and loftiness enlarge and exalt the minds that become 
familiar with them. The mere tongue-work or hand- 
work of virtue slackens and becomes deteriorated, 
when not sustained by profound thought and feeling. 
Moreover, it is the mind that acts, and it puts into 
its action all that it has — and no more — of moral 
and spiritual energy, so that the same outward act 
means more or less, is of greater or less worth, in 
proportion to the depth and vigor of feeling and 
purpose from which it proceeds. It is thus that 
religious devotion nourishes virtue, and that none are 
so well fitted for the duties of the earthly life as those 
who, in their habitual meditation, are the most inti- 
mately conversant with the heavenly life. 



EXAMPLE. 113 

In moral self-culture great benefit is derived from 
example, whether of the living or the dead. Per- 
haps the dead are, in this respect, more useful than 
the living. In witnessing the worthy deeds and 
beneficent agency of a person of superior excellence, 
the tendency is to an over-exact imitation of specific 
acts and methods, which, precisely because they are 
spontaneous and fitting in his case, will not be so in 
the case of his copyist ; while the biography of an 
eminently good man enlists our sympathy with his 
spirit rather than with the details of his life, and 
stimulates us to embody the same spirit in widely 
different forms of duty and usefulness. Thus the 
school-master who in Dr. Arnold's lifetime heard of 
his unprecedented success as an educator, would have 
been tempted to go to Rugby, to study the system on 
the ground, and then to adopt, so far as possible, the 
very plans which he there saw in successful opera- 
tion, — plans which might have been fitted neither to 
his genius, the traditions of his school, nor the demands 
of its patrons. At the same time, the interior of 
Rugby School was very little known, the principles 
of its administration still less, to persons other than 
teachers. But Arnold's biography, revealing the 
foundation-principles of his character and his work, 
raised up for him a host of imitators of all classes 
and conditions. Price, who converted his immense 
candle-factory near London into a veritablfe Christian 
seminary for mutual improvement in knowledge, vir- 
tue, and piety, professed to owe his impulse to this 



112 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

enterprise rolely to the " Life of Arnold,' and like 
instances w^re multiplied in very various professions 
throughout the English-speaking world. In fine, ex- 
ample is of service to us, not in pointing out the 
precise things to be done, but in exhibiting the 
beauty, loveliness, and majesty of moral goodness, 
the possibility of exalted moral attainments, and the 
varied scope for their exercise in human life. Even 
he whose example we, as Christians, hold in a rever- 
ence which none other shares, is to be imitated, not 
by slavishly copying his specific acts, which, because 
they were suitable in Judaea in the first century, are 
for the mDst part unfitting in America in the nine- 
teenth century, but by imbibing his spirit, and then 
incarnatiug it in the forms of active duty and service 
appropriate to our time and land. 

Finally, and obviously, the practice of virtue is 
the most efficient means of moral self-culture. As 
the thought uttered or written becomes indelibly fixed 
in the mind, so does the principle or sentiment em- 
bodied in action become more intimately and persist- 
ently an element of the moral self -consciousness. 



CHAPTER X. 

justice; or, duties to one's fellow-beings. 

JUSTICE, in the common use of the word, refers 
only to such rights and dues as can be precisely 
defined, enacted by law, and enforced by legal author- 
ity. Yet we virtually recognize a broader meaning of 
the word, whenever we place law and justice in oppo- 
sition to each other, as when we speak of an unjust 
law. In this phrase we imply that there is a supreme 
and universal justice, of whose requirements human 
law is but a partial and imperfect transcript. This 
justice must embrace all rights and dues of all beings, 
human and Divine ; and it is in this sense that we 
may regard whatever any one being in the universe 
can fitly claim of another being as coming under the 
head of justice. Such, as we have already intimated, 
is the sense in which we have used the term in the 
caption of a chapter which will embrace piety and 
benevolence no less than integrity and veracity. 

SECTION I. 
DUTIES TO GOD. 

While we cannot command our affections, we can 
so govern and direct our thoughts as to excite the 
s 



114 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

affections which we desire to cherish ; and if certain 
affections must inevitably result from certain trains 
or habits of thought, those affections may be regarded 
as virtually subject to the will, and, if right, as duties. 
It is in this sense that gratitude and love to God are 
duties. We cannot contemplate the tokens of his 
love in the outward universe, the unnumbered objects 
which have no other possible use than to be enjoyed, 
the benignity of his perpetual providence, the endow- 
ments and capacities of our own being, the immor- 
tality of our natural aspiration and our Christian 
faith and hope, the forgiveness and redemption that 
come to us through Jesus Christ, and the immeasur- 
able blessings of his mission and gospel, without fer- 
vent gratitude to our infinite Benefactor. Nor can 
we think of him as the Archetype and Source of all 
those traits of spiritual beauty and excellence which, 
in man, call forth our reverence, admiration, and affec- 
tion, without loving in Him perfect goodness, purity, 
and mercy. These attributes might, indeed, of them- 
selves fail to present the Supreme Being to our con- 
ceptions as a cognizable personality, were it not that 
the personal element is so clearly manifest in the 
visible universe and in God's constant providence. 
But there are numerous objects, phenomena, and 
events in nature and providence which have — so to 
speak — a distinctive personal expression, so that the 
familiar metaphors of God's countenance, smile, hand, 
and voice do not transcend the literal experience of 
him who goes through life with the inward eye and 
ear always open. 



PUBLIC WORSHIP. H5 

The omnipresence of God makes it the dictate of 
natural piety to address Him directly in thanksgiv- 
ing and prayer, — not, of necessity, in words, except 
as words are essential to the definiteness of thoughts. 
but in such words or thoughts as constitute an ex- 
pression to Him of the sentiments of which He is 
fittingly the object. As regards prayer, indeed, the 
grave doubts that exist in some minds as to its effi- 
cacy might be urged as a reason why it should not 
be offered ; but wrongly. It is so natural, so intrin- 
sically fitting to ask what we desire and need of an 
omnipresent, omnipotent, all-merciful Being, who has 
taught us to call him our Father, that the very appro- 
priateness of the asking is in itself a strong reason for 
believing that we shall not ask in vain. Nor can we 
ask in vain, if through this communion of the human 
spirit with the Divine there be an inflow of strength 
or of peace into the soul that prays, even though the 
specific objects pra}^ed for be not granted. That 
these objects, when material, are often not granted, 
we very well know ; yet we know too little of the 
extent of material laws, and of the degree to which a 
discretionary Providence may work, not in contraven- 
tion of, but through those laws, to pronounce dog- 
matically that the prayers of men are wholly un- 
recognized in the course of events. 

As the members of the same community have very 
numerous blessings and needs in common, it is obvi- 
ously fitting that they should unite in public wor- 
ship, praise, and prayer ; and if this be a duty of 



116 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the community collectively, participation in it must, 
by parity of reason, be the duty of its individual 
members. Public worship involves the fitness, we 
may even say the necessity, of appropriating exclu- 
sively to it certain places and times. Associations 
attach themselves to places so indelibly, that it would 
be impossible to maintain the gravity and sacredness 
of devotional services in buildings or on spots ordi- 
narily devoted to secular purposes, either of business 
or of recreation. Nor could assemblies for worship 
be convened, otherwise than at predetermined and 
stated intervals ; nor could their devotional purpose 
be served, were there not stated portions of time 
sequestered from ordinary avocations and amusements. 
Hence the duty — on the part of all who admit the 
fitness of public worship — of reverence for conven- 
tionally sacred places, and of abstinence from what 
ever is inconsistent with the religious uses of the day 
appropriated to worship. 1 

1 The points at issue with regard to sabbatical observance hardly belong 
to an elementary treatise on ethics. I ought not, however, to leave any 
doubt as to my own opinion. I believe, then, the rest of the Sabbath a 
lecessity of man's constitution, physical and mental, of that of the beasts 
ubservient to his use, and, in some measure, even of the inanimate agents 
under his control, while the sequestration of the day from the course of 
ordinary life is equally a moral and religious necessity. The weekly Sab- 
bath I regard as a dictate of natural piety, and a primeval institution, re- 
enacted, not established, by Moses, and sanctioned by our Saviour when 
be refers to the Decalogue as a compend of moral duty, as also in various 
other forms and ways. As to modes of sabbatical observance, the rigid 
abstinences and austerities once common in New England were derived 
from the Mosaic ceremonial law, and have no sanction either in the New 
Testament or in the habits of the early Christians. I can conceive of no 



POSITIVE DUTIES. H? 

It remains for us to consider the obligations im- 
posed by an acknowledged revelation from God. 
The position in which we are placed by such a revela- 
tion may best be illustrated by reference to what 
takes place in every human family. A judicious 
father's commands, precepts, or counsels to his son are 
of two kinds. In the first place, he lays emphatic 
stress on duties which the son knows or might know 
from his own sense of the fitting and the right, such 
as honesty, veracity, temperance. These duties will 
not be in reality any more incumbent on the son be- 
cause they are urged upon him by his father; but 
if he be a son worthy of the name, he will be more 
profoundly impressed by their obligation, and will 
find in his filial love an additional and strong mo- 
tive toward their observance. The father will, in the 
second place, prescribe either for his son's benefit or 
in his own service certain specific acts, in themselves 
morally indifferent, and these, when thus prescribed, 
are no longer indifferent, but, as acts of obedience to 
rightful authority, they become fitting, right, obliga- 
tory, and endowed with all the characteristics of acts 
that are in themselves virtuous. Now a revelation 
naturally would, and the Christian revelation does, 
contain precepts and commands of both these classes. 
It prescribes with solemn emphasis the natural vir- 

better rule for the Lord's day, than that each person so spend it as to in- 
terfere as little as possible with its fitting use by others, and to make it as 
availing as he can for his own relaxation from secular cares, and growth 
in wisdom and goodness. 



118 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

fcues -which are obligatory upon us on grounds of in- 
trinsic fitness ; and though these are not thus made 
any the more our duty, we have, through the teach - 
mgs and example of Jesus Christ, a more vivid 
sense of our obligation, a higher appreciation of the 
beauty of virtue, and added motives to its cultivation 
derived from the love, the justice, and the retributive 
providence of God. The Christian revelation, also, 
contains certain directions, not in themselves of any 
intrinsic obligation, as, for instance, those relating to 
baptism and the eucharist. So far as we can see, 
other and very different rites might have served the 
same purpose with these. Yet it is fitting and right 
that these, and not others, should be observed, simply 
because the Divine authority which enacts them has 
a right to command and to be obeyed. Duties of 
this class are commonly called positive, in contra- 
distinction from natural obligations. Both classes 
are equally imperative on the ground of fitness ; but 
with this difference, that in the latter class the fitness 
resides in the duties themselves, in the former it 
grows out of the relation between him who gives and 
those who receive the command. 



section n. 

DUTIES OF THE FAMILY. 

The inviolableness and permanence of marriagw 
are so absolutely essential to the stability and well- 



MARRIAGE A PERMANENT CONTRACT. 119 

being of families, as to be virtually a part of the law 
of nature. The young of other species haye but a 
very brief period of dependence ; while the human 
child advances very slowly toward maturity, and for 
a considerable portion of his life needs, for both body 
and mind, support, protection, and guidance from his 
seniors. The separation of parents by other causes 
than death might leave it an unsolvable question, to 
which of them the custody of their children apper- 
tained ; and in whichever way they were disposed of, 
their due nurture and education would be inade- 
quately secured. The children might be thrown 
upon the mother's care, while the means of support- 
ing them belonged exclusively to the father. Or in 
the father's house they might suffer for lack of a 
mother's personal attention and services ; while if he 
contracted a new matrimonial connection, the chil- 
dren of the previous marriage could hardly fail of 
aeglect, or even of hatred and injury, from their 
mother's successful rival, especially if she had chil- 
dren of her own. 1 

The life-tenure of the marriage-contract contributes 
equally to the happiness of the conjugal relation, in 
the aggregate. There are, no doubt, individual cases 
of hardship, in which an utter and irremediable in- 

1 It was the malignity displayed toward the children of divorced wives 
by the women who succeeded them in the affections and homes of theii 
Husbands, that in Roman literature attached to the name of a stepmothei 
(noverca) the most hateful associations, which certainly have no place in 
modern Christendom, where the stepmother oftener than not assumes the 
maternal cares of the deceased wife as if they were natively her own. 



120 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

compatibility of temper and character makes married 
life a burden and a weariness to both parties. But 
the cases are much more numerous, in which discrep- 
ancies of taste and disposition are brought by time 
and habit into a more comprehensive harmony, and 
the husband and wife, because unlike, become only 
the more essential, each to the other's happiness and 
welfare. Where there is sincere affection, there is 
little danger that lapse of years in a permanent mar- 
riage will enfeeble it ; while, were the contract void- 
able at will, there might be after marriage, as often 
before marriage, a series of attachments of seemingly 
equal ardor, each to be superseded in its turn by 
some new attraction. Where, on the other hand, the 
union is the result, not of love, but of mutual esteem 
and confidence, aided by motives of convenience, the 
very possibility of an easy divorce would render each 
party captious and suspicious, so that confidence 
could be easily shaken, and esteem easily impaired ; 
while in those who expect always to have a common 
home the tendency is to those habits of mutual toler- 
ance, accommodation, and concession, through which 
confidence and esteem ripen into sincere and lasting 
affection. 

As in many respects each family must be a unit, 
and as the conflict of rival powers is no less ruinous 
to a household than to a state, the family must needs 
have one recognized head or representative, and this 
place is fittingly held by the husband rather than by 
the wife ; for by the laws and usages of all civilized 



DUTIES OF CHILDREN. 121 

nations he is held responsible — except in criminal 
matters — for his wife and his minor children. But 
in the weli-ordered family, each party to the marriage- 
contract is supreme in his or her own department, 
and in that of the other prompt in counsel, sympathy, 
and aid, and slow in dissent, remonstrance, or re- 
proof. These departments are defined with perfect 
distinctness by considerations of intrinsic fitness, and 
any attempt to interchange them can be only subver- 
sive of domestic peace and social order. 

The parent's duties to the child are maintenance 
in his own condition in life, care for his education and 
his moral and religious culture, advice, restraint when 
needed, punishment when both deserved and needed, 
pure example and wholesome influence, aid in the 
formation of habits and aptitudes suited to his prob- 
able calling or estate in his adult years, and provision 
for his favorable entrance on his future career. Some 
of these duties are obviously contingent on the par- 
ent's ability; others are absolute and imperative. 
The judicious parent will, on the one hand, retain his 
parental authority as long as he is legally responsible 
for his child ; but, on the other hand, will train him 
gradually to self-help and self-dependence, and will 
concede to him, as he approaches years of maturity, 
such freedom of choice and action as is consistent 
with his permanent well-being. 

The child's duty is unqualified submission to 
the parent's authority, obedience to his commands, 
and compliance with his wishes, in all things not 



122 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

morally wrong, and this, aot only for the years of 
minority, but so long as he remains a member of his 
parent's family, or dependent on him for subsistence. 
Subsequently, it is undoubtedly his duty to consult 
the reasonable wishes of his parent, to hold him in 
respect and reverence, to minister assiduously to his 
comfort and happiness, and, if need be, to sustain 
him in his years of decline and infirmity. 



SECTION in 
VERACITY. 

The duty of veracity is not contingent on the 
rights of any second person, but is derived from con- 
siderations of intrinsic fitness. If representations of 
facts, truths, or opinions are to be made, it is obvi- 
ously fitting and right that they should be conformed 
to one's knowledge or belief ; and no one can make 
representations which he knows to be false without 
the consciousness of unfitness and wrong. 

The most important interests of society depend 
on the confidence which men repose in one an- 
other's veracity. But for this, history would be 
worth no more than fiction, and its lessons would be 
unheeded. But for this, judicial proceedings would 
be a senseless mockery of justice, and the administrar 
tion of law and equity, the merest haphazard. But 
for this, the common intercourse of life would be in- 
vaded by incessant doubt and suspicion, and its daily 



ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS. 128 

transactions, aimless and tentative. Against this 
condition of things man is defended by his own na- 
ture. It is more natural to tell the truth than to 
utter falsehood. The very persons who are the least 
scrupulous in this matter utter the truth when they 
have no motive to do otherwise. Spontaneous false- 
hood betokens insanity. 

The essence of falsehood lies in the intention to 
deceive, not in the words uttered. The words may 
bear a double sense ; and while one of the meanings 
may be true, the circumstances or the manner of 
utterance may be such as inevitably to impose the 
false meaning upon the hearer. A part of the truth 
may be told in such a way as to convey an altogether 
false impression. A fact may be stated with the ex- 
press purpose of misleading the hearer with regard to 
another fact. Looks or gestures may be framed with 
the intent to communicate or confirm a falsehood. 
Silent acquiescence in a known falsehood may be no 
less criminal than its direct utterance. 

But has not one a right to conceal facts which 
another has no right to know? In such a case, 
concealment is undoubtedly a right ; but falsehood, 
or equivocation, or truth which will convey a false 
impression, is not a right. This question has not un- 
frequently arisen with regard to anonymous publica- 
tions. It might be a fair subject of inquiry, whether 
anonymous writing is not in all cases objectionable, 
on the ground that a sense of personal responsibility 
for statements given to the public would insure a 



124 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

more uniform regard to truth and justice, as well as 
greater care in the ascertainment of facts, and more 
mature deliberation in the formation of judgments 
and opinions. But if anonymous writing be justified, 
the writer is authorized to guard his secret by era- 
ploying a copyist, or by covert modes of transmission 
to the press, or by avoiding such peculiarities of style 
as. might betray him. But if, notwithstanding these 
precautions, the authorship be suspected and charged 
upon him, we cannot admit his right to denial, 
whether expressly, or by implication, or even by the 
utterance of a misleading fact. He undertook the 
authorship with the risk of discovery ; he had no 
right to give publicity to what he has need to be 
ashamed of ; and if there be secondary, though grave 
reasons why he would prefer to remain unknown, 
they camiot be sufficient to justify him in falsehood. 

Is truth to be told to an insane person, when it 
might be dangerous to him or to others ? May not 
he be deceived for his benefit, decoyed into a place of 
safe detention, or deterred by falsehood from some 
intended act of violence ? Those who have the 
guardianship of the insane are unanimous in the 
opinion that falsehood, when discovered by them, 
is always attended with injurious consequences, and 
that it should be resorted to only when imperatively 
required for their immediate safety or for that of 
others. But in such cases the severest moralist could 
not deny the necessity, and therefore the right, of 
falsehood. But it would be falsehood in form, anr) 



FALSEHOOD IN EXTREME CASES. 125 

not in fact. Truth-telling implies two conscious par- 
ties. The statement from which an insane person will 
draw false inferences, and which will drive him to 
an act or paroxysm of madness, is not truth to him. 
The statement which is indispensable ' to his safety, 
repose, or reasonable conduct, is virtually true to him, 
inasmuch as it conveys impressions as nearly con- 
formed to the truth as he is capable of receiving. 

Is falsehood justifiable for the safety of one's 
own life or that of others ? This is a broad ques- 
tion, and comprehends a very wide diversity of cases. 
It includes the cases, in which the alternative is to 
deny one's political or religious convictions, or to suf- 
fer death for the profession of them. Here, however, 
there can be no difference of opinion. Political free- 
dom and religious truth have been, in past ages, 
propagated more effectively by martyrdoms, than by 
any other instrumentality ; and no men have so fully 
merited the gratitude and reverence of their race as 
those who have held the truth dearer than life. 

But the form which the question ordinarily as- 
sumes is this : If by false information I can prevent 
the commission of an atrocious crime, am I justi- 
fied in the falsehood? It ought first to be said, 
that this is hardly a practical question. Probably it 
has never presented itself practically to any person 
under whose eye these pages will fall, or in any in- 
stance within his knowledge. Nor can the familiar 
discussion of such extreme cases be of any possible 
benefit. On the other hand, he who familiarizes 



126 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

himself with the idea that under such a stress of cir- 
cumstances what else were wrong becomes right, will 
be prone to apply similar reasoning to an exigency 
somewhat less urgent, and thence to any case in 
which great apparent good might result from a de- 
parture from strict veracity. Far better is it to make 
literal truth the unvarying law of life, and then to 
rest in the assurance that, should an extreme case 
present itself, the exigency of the moment will sug- 
gest the course to be pursued. Yet, in ethical strict- 
ness, falsehood from one self-conscious person to an- 
other cannot be justified ; but we can conceive of cir- 
cumstances in which it might be extenuated. There 
are no degrees of right ; but of wrong there may be 
an infinite number of degrees. One straight line can- 
not be straighter than another ; but we can conceive 
of a curve or a waving line that shall have but an 
infinitesimal divergence from a straight line. So in 
morals, there may be an infinitesimal wrong, — an act 
which cannot be pronounced right, yet shall diverge 
so little from the right that conscience would contract 
from it no appreciable stain, that man could not con- 
demn it, and that we cannot conceive of its being 
registered against the soul in the chancery of heaven. 
Such may be the judgment which would properly 
attach itself to a falsehood by which an atrocious 
crime was prevented. 

Promises belong under the head of veracity for a 
double reason, inasmuch as they demand in their 



PROMISES. 127 

making the truthful declaration of a sincere purpose, 
and in their execution an equal loyalty to the truth, 
even though it involve inconvenience, cost, or loss. 
The words of a promise may often bear more than 
one interpretation ; but it is obviously required by 
veracity that the promiser should fulfil his promise in 
the sense in which he supposed it to be understood by 
him to whom it was made. 

There are cases in which a promise should not 
be kept. The promise to perform an immoral act is 
void from the beginning. It is wrong to make it, and 
a double wrong to keep it. The promise to perform 
an act, not intrinsically immoral, but unlawful, should 
be regarded in the same light. If both parties were 
aware, when the promise was made, of the unlawful- 
ness of the act, then neither party has the right to 
deem himself injured by the other. If, however, the 
promiser was aware of the unlawfulness of his prom- 
ise, while the promisee supposed it lawful, the prom- 
iser, though not bound by his promise, is under 
obligation to remunerate the promisee for his disap- 
pointment or loss. If the act promised becomes un- 
lawful between the making and the execution of the 
promise, the promise is made void, and the promisee 
has no ground of complaint against the promiser. 
Thus, if a man promised to send to a correspondent 
goods of a certain description at a certain time, and 
before that time the exportation of such goods were 
prohibited by law, he would be free both from his 
promise and from responsibility for its non-fulfilment. 



128 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

A promise neither immoral nor unlawful, but made 
under a mistake common to both parties, and such 
as — had it been known — would have prevented the 
promise, is void. An extorted promise to perform 
an immoral or unlawful act cannot be binding. One 
has, indeed, no moral right to make such a promise, 
though if the case be one of extreme urgency and 
peril, extenuating circumstances may reduce the 
wrong to an infinitesimal deviation from the right; 
but, when the duress is over, no considerations can 
justify the performance of what it was wrong to 
promise. But a promise, not in itself immoral or 
unlawful, is binding, though made under duress. 
Thus, if a man attacked by bandits has had his life 
spared on condition of a pecuniary ransom, he is 
bound to pay the ransom ; for at the moment of peril 
he thought his life worth all he promised to give for 
it, and it is neither immoral nor unlawful to give 
money, even to a robber. In a case like this, regard 
for the safety of others should, also, have weight ; for 
in a country liable to such perils, the breach of a 
promise by one man might cost the community the 
lives of many. 

Contracts are mutual promises, in which each 
party puts himself under specific obligations to the 
other. They are to be interpreted on the same prin- 
ciples, and to be regarded as void or voidable on the 
same grounds, with promises. 

An oath is an invocation of the protection and 



OATHS 129 

blessing of God, or of his indignation and curse, upon 
the person swearing, according as his assertion is true 
or false, or as his promise shall be observed or violated. 
" So help you God," the form in common use in this 

country, expresses the idea that underlies an oath, 

so being, of course, the emphatic word, Oaths are 
exacted of witnesses in courts of justice in confirma- 
tion of their testimony, and of incumbents of public 
offices in pledge of their fidelity. They are required, 
too, in attestation of invoices, inventories of estates, 
returns of taxable property, and various financial and 
statistical statements made under public authority. 
There are, also, not a few persons of whom, and occa- 
sions on which an oath of allegiance to the govern- 
ment of the state or nation is demanded. 

An oath does not enhance one's obligation to 
tell the truth, or to fulfil his promise. This obliga- 
tion is entire and perfect in all cases, on the ground 
of intrinsic fitness, and of the known will and com- 
mand of God. But the tendency of oaths is to estab- 
lish in the minds of men two classes of assertions and 
promises, one more sacred than the other. He who 
is required under the solemn sanction of an oath 
merely to tell the truth or to make a promise in good 
faith, arrives naturally at the conclusion that he is 
bound to a less rigid accuracy or fidelity in ordinary 
statements or promises. The law of the land, as we 
have seen, bears an important part in the ethical edu- 
cation of the young; and by means of the legal dis- 
tinction created between assertions or promises under 



130 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

oath and those made without that sanction, children 
and youth are trained to regard simple truth-telling 
and promise-keeping as of secondary obligation. 
This effect of legal oaths is attested by the prevalence 
of profane swearing, and by the frequent use of oath- 
like forms of asseveration, not regarded as profane, by 
persons of a more serious character. Except in the 
religious sects that abjure the use of oaths, nine per- 
sons out of ten swear more or less, and spontaneously 
confirm statements which are in the least degree 
strange or difficult of belief, or promises to which 
they wish to give an air of sincerity and earnestness, 
by the strongest oaths they dare to use. This cornea 
of a felt necessity, which will exist as long as preemi- 
nent sanctity is attached to legal oaths. 

Oaths are notoriously ineffective in insuring 
truth and fidelity. So far as their educational in 
fluence is concerned, they tend, as we have seen, to 
undermine the reverence for truth in itself considered, 
which is the surest safeguard of individual veracity. 
Then too, so far as reliance is placed upon an oath, 
the attention of those concerned is directed with the 
less careful scrutiny to the character for veracity borne 
by him to whom it is administered. In point of fact, 
men swear falsely whenever and wherever they would 
be willing to utter falsehood without an oath. In 
courts of justice, the pains and penalties of perjury 
undoubtedly prevent a great deal of false swearing ; 
but precisely the same penalties are attached to the 
affirmation of persons who, on the ground of relig- 



OATHS INEFFECTIVE. 181 

ious scruples, are excused from swearing, and they 
certainly are none too severe for false testimony, in 
whatever way it may be given. Notwithstanding 
this check, however, it is well known that before a 
corrupt or incompetent tribunal, an unprincipled 
advocate never finds any difficulty in buying false 
testimony ; and even where justice is uprightly and 
skilfully administered, it is not rare to encounter 
between equally credible witnesses such flagrant and 
irreconcilable contradictions as to leave no room for 
any hypothesis other than perjury on one side or 
both. Perjury in transactions with the national 
revenue and with municipal assessors is by no means 
unprecedented among persons of high general reputa- 
tion. False oaths of this description are, indeed, not 
infrequently preceded by some fictitious formalism, 
such as an unreal and temporary transfer of prop- 
erty ; but this is done, not in order to evade the guilt 
of perjury, but, in case of detection, to open- a tech- 
nical escape from its legal penalty. Promissory oaths 
are of equally little worth. There is not a public 
functionary from the President of the United States 
to the village constable, who does not take what is 
meant to be a solemn oath (though often adminis- 
tered with indecent levity) to be loyal to the consti- 
tution of the country or state, and faithful in the 
discharge of his official duties. Yet what effect has 
this vast amount of swearing, if it be not to make 
perjury so familiar an offence as to be no longer 
deemed disgraceful? Not a bribe is taken by a 



182 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

member of Congress, not a contract surreptitiously 
obtained by a municipal official, not an appointment 
made to the known detriment of the public on per- 
sonal or party grounds, without the commission of a 
crime, in theory transcendently heinous, in practice 
constantly condoned and ignored. Nor can we be 
mistaken in regarding the sacrilege and virtual blas- 
phemy resulting from the institution of judicial, as- 
sertory, and promissory oaths, as holding no sec- 
ondary place among the causes of the moral decline 
and corruption of which we witness so manifest to- 
kens. 

To one who does not carry foregone conclusions of 
his own to the interpretation of the New Testament, 
it can hardly appear otherwise than certain that the 
Founder of Christianity intended to prohibit all 
oaths. His precept, " Swear not at all," occurs in a 
series of specifications of maxims drawn from the 
standard morality of his day, under each of which he 
sets aside the existing ethical rule, and substitutes for 
it one covering precisely the same ground, and con- 
formed to the intrinsic right as represented in his 
own spirit and life. " Ye have heard that it hath 
been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; 
but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil." " Ye 
have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy ; but I say unto 
you, Love your enemies." The analogy of these and 
other declarations of the same series compels us to 
believe that when Jesus said, " Ye have heard that it 



OATHS FORBIDDEN BY CHRIST. 138 

hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not 
forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord 
thine oaths," the precept which followed, " I say unto 
you, Swear not at all," must have applied to the same 
subject-matter with the maxim which precedes it, — 
tbat Jesus must have intended to disallow something 
that had been previously permitted. If so, not triv- 
ial or profane oaths alone, but oaths made in good 
faith and with due solemnity must have been in- 
cluded in the precept, " Swear not at all." 1 It is his- 
torically certain that the primitive Christians thus 
understood the evangelic precept. They not only 
refused the usual idolatrous forms of adjuration, but 
maintained that all oaths had been forbidden by their 
D^yine Lawgiver ; nor have we any proof of their 

1 When Jesus forbids swearing by heaven, because " it is God's throne," 
and by the earth, because " it is his footstool," the inference is obvious 
that, for still stronger reasons, all direct swearing by God himself is pro- 
hibited. The word wre, which introduces the oaths by inferior objects 
specified in the text under discussion, not infrequently corresponds to our 
phrase not even. With this sense of wre, the passage would be rendered, 
" But I say unto you, Swear not at all, not even by heaven," etc. 

I find that some writers on this subject quote in vindication of oaths on 
solemn occasions the instances in the Scriptures in which God is said to 
have sworn by Himself. The reply is obvious, that no being can swear by 
himself, the essential significance of an oath being an appeal to some being 
or object other than one's self. Because God "can swear by no greater," 
it is certain that when this phraseology is used concerning Him, it is em- 
ployed figuratively, to aid the poverty of human conceptions, and to ex- 
press the certainty of his promise by the strongest terms which human lan- 
guage affords. In like manner, God is said by the sacred writers to repent 
of intended retribution to evil-doers, not that infinite justice and love can 
change in thought, plan, or purpose, but because a change of disposition 
uid feeling is wont to precede human clemency to evil-doers. 



134: MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

having receded from this position, until that strange 
fusion of church and state under Constantine, in 
which it is hard to say whether Christianity mounted 
the throne of the Caesars or succumbed to their rule. 



SECTION IV. 
HONESTY. 

Honesty relates to transactions in which money or 
other property is concerned. In its broadest sense, 
it forbids not only the violation of the rights of indi- 
viduals, but, equally, acts and practices designed to 
gain imfair emolument at the expense of the com- 
munity, or of any class or portion of its members. It 
enjoins not merely the paying of debts and the per- 
formance of contracts, but rigid fidelity in every trust, 
whether private or public. Its ground is intrinsic 
fitness ; and a sense of fitness will suggest its general 
rules, and will always enable one to determine his 
duty in individual cases. Its whole field may be 
covered by two precepts, level with the humblest 
understanding, and infallible in their application. 
The first relates to transactions between man and 
man, — Do that, and only that, which you would 
regard as just and right, if it were done to you. 
The second embraces concerns that affect numbers or 
classes of persons, — Do that, and only that, which, 
were you the responsible trustee and guardian of the 
public good, you would prescribe or sanction as just 
and right. 



HONESTY. 185 

Notwithstanding the undoubted increase of dis- 
honesty in recent times and its disastrous frequency, 
there can be no doubt that the majority of men are 
honest, and that the transactions in which there is 
bo deception or wrong, largely outnumber those 
which are fraudulent. Were this not so, there could 
be neither confidence nor credit, enterprise would be 
paralyzed, business would be reduced to the lowest 
demands of absolute necessity, and every man would 
be the sole custodian of what he might make, produce, 
or in any way acquire. There can, therefore, be no 
element more directly hostile to the permanence, not 
to say the progress, of material civilization and of the 
higher interests which depend upon it, than fraud, 
peculation, and the violation of trust, in pecuniary 
and mercantile affairs, and with reference to public 
funds and measures. Yet there are methods, for 
which to a large degree honest men are responsible, 
in which dishonesty is created, nourished, and re- 
warded. In political life, if few office-holders are 
inaccessible to bribes, it is not because men of im- 
pregnable integrity might not, as in earlier times, be 
found in ample numbers for all places of trust ; but 
because the compromises, humiliations, and conces- 
sions through which alone, in many of our constitu- 
encies, one can become the candidate of a party, are 
each as an honest man either would spurn at the out- 
set, or could endure only by parting with his honesty. 
So long as men will persist in electing to municipal 
trusts those whose sole qualification is blind loyalty 



136 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

and unscrupulous service to a party, they cau expect 
only robbery under the form of taxation ; and, in 
fact, the financial revelations that have been made in 
the commercial metropolis of our country are typical 
of what is taking place, so far as opportunity serves, 
in cities, towns, and villages all over the land. As 
regards embezzlements, forgeries, and frauds in the 
management of pecuniary trusts, there can be no 
doubt that the number is greatly multiplied by the 
morbid sympathy of the public with the criminals, by 
their frequent evasion of punishment or prompt par- 
don after conviction, and by the ease with which they 
have often recovered their social position and the 
means of maintaining it. 

In addition to this complicity with fraud and wrong 
on the part of the public, there are many ways in 
which dishonesty engenders, almost necessitates dis- 
honesty. A branch of business, in itself honest, may 
be virtually closed against an honest man. The 
adulterations of food, so appallingly prevalent, will 
suggest an illustration of this point. There are com- 
modities in which the mixture of cheaper ingredients 
cannot be detected by the purchaser, and which in 
their debased form can be offered at so low a price as 
to drive the genuine commodities which they replace 
out of the market ; and thus the alternative is pre- 
sented to the hitherto honest dealer to participate 
in the fraud, or to quit the business. The former 
course is, no doubt, taken by many who sincerely 
regret the seeming necessity 



DISHONESTY A PUBLIC INJURY. 137 

Dishonesty not only injures the immediate sufferer 
by the fraud or wrong, but when it becomes fre- 
quent, is a public injury and calamity. In one way 
or another it alienates from the use of every honest 
man a very large proportion of his earnings or in- 
come. In this country, at the present time, we prob- 
ably fall short of the truth in saying that at least a 
third part of every citizen's income is paid in the 
form of either direct or indirect taxation, and of this 
amount a percentage much larger than would be read- 
ily believed is pillaged on its way into the treasury, 
or in its disbursement. Then, as regards bad debts 
(so-called), most of them fraudulently contracted or 
evaded, they are not, in general, the loss of the im- 
mediate creditor, nor ought they to be ; he is obliged 
to charge for his goods a price which will cover these 
debts, and honest purchasers must thus pay the dues 
of the insolvent purchaser. Nor is this a solitary in- 
stance in which innocent persons are obliged to suffer 
* for wrongs with which they seem to have no neces- 
sary connection. There are very few exceptions to 
the rule, under which, however, we have room for but 
one more example. It is a well known fact that 
many American railways have not only cost very 
much more money than was ever laid out upon them, 
but are made, by keeping the construction-account 
long and generously open, to represent on the books 
of the respective corporations much larger sums than 
they cost, — especially in cases where the enterprise 
is lucrative and the dividends are limited by statute. 



138 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Now in some sections of our country a transaction of 
this kind — essentially fraudulent, under however 
respectable auspices — is a disastrous check on pro- 
ductive industry by the heavy freight-tariff which it 
imposes, — so heavy sometimes as to keep bulky 
commodities, as wheat and corn, out of the markets 
where, at a fair cost for transportation, they might 
find remunerative sale. Thus the very means de- 
vised for opening the resources of a region of country 
may be abused to their obstruction and hindrance. 
In fine, dishonesty in all its forms has a diffusive 
power of injury, and, on the mere ground of self- 
defence, demands the remonstrance and antagonism 
of the entire community. 

While in most departments of conduct there is a 
wide neutral ground between the right and the 
condemnably wrong, there are matters of business 
in which there seems to be no such intermediate terri- 
tory, but in which what is fair, honorable, and even 
necessary, is closely contiguous to dishonesty. Thus, 
except in the simplest retail business, all modern com- 
merce is speculation, and the line between legitimate 
and dishonest speculation is to some minds difficult 
of discernment. Yet the discrimination may be 
made. A man has a right to all that he earns by 
services to the community, and these earnings may in 
individual instances reach an immense sum. We can 
easily understand how this may be, nay, must needs 
be the case with the very high salaries paid to master 
manufacturers. Such salaries would not be paid, did 



HONEST PROFITS. 139 

not the intelligence, skill, and organizing capacity of 
these men cheapen by a still larger amount the com- 
modities made under their direction. The case is 
precisely similar with the merchant engaged in legiti- 
mate commerce. By his knowledge of the right 
times and best modes of purchasing, by his enterprise 
and sagacity in maintaining intercourse with and 
between distant markets, and by his outlay of capital 
and skill as a carrier of commodities from the place 
of their production to the place where they are 
needed for use, he cheapens the goods that pass 
through his hands by a greater amount than the toll 
he levies upon them, which — however large — is his 
rightful due. 

Thus also, when, in anticipation of a scarcity of 
some one commodity, a merchant so raises the price 
as essentially to diminish the sale, he earns his in- 
creased profits ; for an enhanced price is the only 
practicable check on consumption. For instance, if 
at the actual rate of consumption the bread-stuff on 
hand would be consumed a month before the new 
harvest could be made availing, no statistical state- 
ment could prevent the month of famine ; but experi- 
enced grain-merchants can adjust the price of the 
stock in hand so as to induce precisely the amount of 
economy which will make that stock last till it can be 
replaced. They will, indeed, obtain a large profit on 
tLeir sales, and will be accused by ignorant persona 
of speculating on scarcity and popular appiehension ; 
but it will be due wholly to their prescience that the 



140 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

scarcity did not become famine, and the apprehension 
suffering ; and they will have merited for this service 
more than the largest profits that can accrue to them. 

The same principles will apply to speculation in 
stocks, which is in many minds identified with dis- 
honest gain. Stocks are marketable commodities, 
equally with sugar and salt. They are liable to 
legitimate fluctuations in value, their actual value 
being affected, often by facts that transpire, often by 
opinions that rest on assignable grounds. Now if a 
man possess skill and foresight enough to buy stocks 
at their lowest rates and to sell them when they will 
bring him a profit, he makes a perfectly legitimate 
investment of his intelligence and sagacity, and in 
facilitating sales for those who need to sell, and pur- 
chases for those who wish to buy, and thus prevent- 
ing capital from lying unused, or remaining incon- 
vertible at need, he earns all that his business yields 
him by the substantial services which he renders. 

The legitimate business of the merchant and the 
broker is contingent, as we have seen, on fluctua- 
tions in the market, and he who has the sagacity to 
foresee these fluctuations and the enterprise to pre- 
pare for them, derives from them advantage to which 
he is fairly entitled. But it is precisely at this point 
that the stress of temptation rests, and the opportu- 
nity presents itself for dishonesty in ways of which 
the laws take no cognizance, and on which public 
opinion is by no means severe. The contingencies 
which sagacity can foresee, capital and credit can 



RIGHT AND WRONG IN BUSINESS. 141 

often create. Virtual scarcity may be produced by 
forestalling and monopoly. When there is no actual 
dearth, even famine-prices may be obtained for the 
necessaries of life by the skilful manipulation of the 
grain-market. So, too, in the stock-market, bonds 
and shares, instead of being bought or sold for what 
they are worth, of actual owners and to real pur- 
chasers, may be merely gambled with, — bought in 
large amounts in order to create a demand that 
shall swell their price, or so thrown upon the mar- 
ket as to reduce their price below their real value, 
and all this with the sole purpose of mutual contra- 
vention and discomfiture. By operations of this 
kind, not only is no useful end subserved, but the 
financial interests and relations of the community are 
injuriously, often ruinously, deranged; while not a 
few private holders of stock have their credit essen- 
tially impaired by a sudden fall of price, or by the 
inflation of nominal value are led into rash specula- 
tions. 

In the cases cited it may be seen how closely the 
right abuts upon the wrong, so that one may over- 
pass the line almost unconsciously. Yet it is be- 
lieved that a man may determine for himself on which 
side of the line he belongs. The department of busi- 
ness, or the mode of transacting business, which can- 
not by any possibility be of benefit to the community, 
still more, that which in its general course is of pos- 
itively injurious tendency, is essentially dishonest, 
even though there be no individual acts of fraud. He 



142 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

really defrauds the public who lives upon the public 
without rendering, or purposing to render any valuable 
return ; and if there be any profession or department 
of business to which this description applies, it should 
be avoided or forsaken by every man who means to be 
honest. 

Among the many mooted cases in which the ques- 
tion of honesty is involved, our proposed limits will 
permit us to consider only that of usury x (so-called), 
There can be no doubt that usury laws and the opin- 
ion that sustains them sprang from the false theory, 
according to which money was regarded, not as value, 
but merely as the measure of value. It is now under- 
stood that it owes its capacity to measure value solely 
to its own intrinsic value ; that its paper representa- 
tives can equal it in purchasing power only when 
convertible at pleasure into coin ; and that paper not 
immediately convertible can obtain the character of 
money only so far as there is promise or hope of its 
ultimate conversion into coin. It follows that money 
stands on the same footing with all other values, — 
that its use, therefore, is a marketable commodity, 
varying indefinitely in its fitting price, according as 
money is abundant or scarce, the loan for a long or a 
short period, and the borrower of more or less certain 
solvency. For ordinary loans the relations of supply 
and demand are amply competent to regulate the rate 

1 The odious meaning of excessive interest, as attached to uswy, is of 
comparatively recent date. In the earlier English, as in our translation of 
the Bible, it denotes any sum given for the use of money. 



BENEFICENCE. 143 

of interest, while he who incurs an extra-hazardous 
risk fairly earns a correspondingly high rate of com- 
pensation. There is, therefore, no intrinsic wrong in 
one's obtaining for the use of his money all that it ia 
worth ; and while we cannot justify the violation of 
anv laws not absolutely immoral, dishonesty forms no 
part of the offence of the man who takes more than 
legal interest. 1 

SECTION V. 

BENEFICENCE. 

We have a distinct consciousness of the needs 
of human beings. If we have not suffered destitu- 
tion in our own persons, we yet should deprecate it. 
What we should dread others feel. The things which 
we find or deem essential to our well-being, many 
lack. We, it may be, possess them or the means of 
procuring them, beyond our power of personal use. 
This larger share of material goods has come to us, 
indeed, honestly, by the operation of laws inherent 
in the structure of society, and thus, as we believe, by 
Divine appointment. At the same time we are con- 
scious, in a greater or less degree, of the benevolent 
affections. We are moved to pity by the sight or 
knowledge of want or suffering. Our sense of fit- 

1 In this country usury laws are fast yielding to the growth of inteli 
gence in monetary affairs. Wherever they exist in their severer forms, 
they only enhance the rate of interest paid by the major portion of the 
class of borrowers, as the lender must be compensated, not only for the 
use of his money, and for the risk of his creditor's inability to repay it, 
bet also foi the additional risk of detection, prosecution, and forfeiture 



144 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ness is painfully' disturbed by the existence of needs 
unsupplied, of calamities unrelieved. We cannot but 
be aware of the adaptation of such superfluity of ma- 
terial goods as we may possess to beneficent uses ; and 
it can hardly be that we shall not rest in the belief 
that, in the inevitable order of society, it is the prede- 
termined design and purpose of abundance to supply 
deficiency, — of the capacity of service, to meet the 
ever pressing demands for service. Beneficence, then, 
is a duty based on considerations of intrinsic fitness. 

But beneficence must be actual, not merely for 
mal, good-doing. Some of the most easy and ob- 
vious modes of supply or relief are adapted to perpe- 
tuate the very evils to which they minister, either 
by destroying self-respect, by discouraging self-help, 
or by granting immunity to positively vicious habits. 
The tendency of instinctive kindness is to indiscrim- 
inate giving. But there can be very few cases in 
which this is not harmful. It sustains mendicants as 
a recognized class of society ; and as such they are 
worse than useless. They necessarily lose all sense of 
personal dignity ; they remain ignorant or become in- 
capable of all modes of regular industry, and it is im- 
possible for them to form associations that will be 
otherwise than degrading and corrupting. 

Of equally injurious tendency are the various 
modes of relief at the public charge. They affix 
upon their beneficiaries the indelible brand of pauper- 
ism, which in numerous instances becomes hereditary, 
and in not a few cases has been transmitted through 



PUBLIC RELIEF AND PRIVATE ALMS. 145 

several generations. Experience has shown that re- 
covery from a condition thus dependent is exceed- 
ingly rare, even with the young and strong, who, had 
they been tided over the stress of need by private and 
judicious charity, would shortly have resumed their 
place among the self-subsisting members of the com- 
munity. Public alms, while they are thus harmful 
to their recipients, impose upon society a far heavier 
burden than private charity. This is due in part to 
the permanent pauperism created by the system, in 
part to the wastefulness which characterizes public 
expenditures of every kind. By special permission of 
the national legislature, the experiment was tried in 
Glasgow, under the direction of Dr. Chalmers, of sub- 
stituting private munificence for relief from the public 
chest, in one of the poorest territorial parishes of the 
city, embracing a population of ten thousand, and the 
result was the expenditure of little more than one 
third of what had been expended under legal author- 
ity. At the same time, the poor and suffering were 
so much more faithfully and kindly cared for, that 
there was a constant overflow of poverty from the 
other districts of the city into this. Public charity, 
when thoroughly systematized, is liable to the still 
stronger objection, that those who are able to give 
relief, in ceasing to feel the necessity, lose the will 
and the capacity of benevolent effort. Yet, were 
there no public provision for the poor, there would be 
cases of destitution, disease, disability, and mental 
imbecility, which would elude private charity, how- 
10 



146 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ever diligent and generous. It must be remembered, 
too, that the same causes may at once enhance the 
demand for beneficent aid, and cripple its resources. 
Thus, in a conflagration, a flood, a dearth, or a com. 
mercial panic, while the stress of need among the 
poor is greatly intensified, the persons on whose char- 
ity under ordinary circumstances, they could place 
the most confident reliance, may be among the chief 
sufferers. Thus, also, during the prevalence of infec- 
tious disease, a large proportion of those who are wont 
to perform the offices of humanity for the suffering, are 
withdrawn by their own fears, or those of their friends, 
from their wonted field of service. Then, too, there 
are various forms of disease and infirmity, which de 
mand special treatment or a permanent asylum ; and 
while institutions designed to meet these wants are 
more wisely and economically administered under pri- 
vate than under public auspices, the state should never 
suffer them to fail or languish for lack of subsidy 
from private sources. The most desirable condition 
of things undoubtedly is that — more nearly real- 
ized in France than in any other country in Christen- 
dom — in which the relief of the poor and suffering 
in ordinary cases, and the charge of charitable insti- 
tutions to a large degree, are left to individuals, vol- 
untary organizations, and religious fraternities and 
sisterhoods, while government supplements and sub- 
sidizes private charity whe e it is found inadequate to 
the need 

The demands upon beneficence are by no means 



BENEFICENCE IN DAILY LIFE. 14? 

exhausted, when material relief and aid have been be- 
stowed. Indeed, alms are often given as a purchase 
of quitclaim for personal service. But the manifes- 
tation and expression of sympathy may make the gift 
of immeasurably more worth and efficacy. Consider- 
ate courtesy, delicacy, and gentleness are essential 
parts of beneficence. There are very few so abject 
that they do not feel insulted and degraded by what 
is coldly, grudgingly, superciliously, or chidingly be- 
stowed ; while the thoughtful tenderness which never 
forgets the sensibilities of those whom it relieves, in- 
spires comfort, hope, and courage, arouses whatever 
capacity there may be of self-help, and is often the 
means of replacing the unfortunate in the position 
from which they have fallen. 

Beneficence has a much broader scope than the 
mere relief of the poor and suffering. In the daily 
intercourse of life there are unnumbered opportunities 
for kindness, many of them slight, yet in their ag- 
gregate, of a magnitude that eludes all computation. 
There is hardly a transaction, an interview, a casual 
wayside meeting, in which it is not in the power of 
each person concerned to contribute in an appreciable 
degree to the happiness or the discomfort of those 
whom he thus meets, or with whom he is brought into 
a relation however transient. In all our movements 
among our fellow-men, it is possible for us to " go about 
doing good." What we can thus do we are bound to do. 
We perceive and feel that this is fitting for us as so- 
cial and as mutually dependent beings. We are con- 



148 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

•cious of the benefit accruing to us from little, name- 
less attentions and courtesies, often of mere look, or 
manner, or voice ; and from these experiences we infer 
that the possibility, and therefore the duty of bene- 
ficence is coextensive with our whole social life. 

The measure of beneficence, prescribed for us on 
the most sacred authority, "All things whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them," needs only to be stated to be received as 
authentic. It supplies a measure for our expectations 
also, as well as for our duties. We have a right to 
expect from others as much courtesy, kindness, ser- 
vice as, were they in our place and we in theirs, we 
should feel bound to render to them, — a rule which 
would often largely curtail our expectations, and in 
the same proportion tone down our disappointments 
and imagined grievances. 

There is another scriptural precept, " Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself," which might at first 
sight seem impracticable, yet which, as we shall see 
on closer examination, represents not only a possible 
attainment, but one toward which all who heartily 
desire and love to do good are tending. There are 
various conditions under which, confessedly, human 
beings love others as well as themselves, or better. 
What else can we say of the mother's love for her 
child, for whose well-being she would make any con- 
ceivable sacrifice, nay, were there need, would surren- 
der life itself? Have we not also sometimes witnessed 
a filial devotion equally entire and self-forgetting? 



LOVE OF ENEMIES. 14c 

Nor are instances wanting, in which brothers and sis 
ters ; or friends who had no bonds of consanguinity 
have showi. by unmistakable deeds and sufferings thi ■ 
their love for one another was at least equal to thei 
self-love. This same love for others, as for himself 
is manifested by the self-devoting patriot, the prac 
tical philanthropist, the Christian missionary. Then 
is ample ground for it in the theory of humanity 
which forms a part of our accustomed religious utter- 
ance. We call our fellow-men our brethren, as chil- 
dren of the same Father. So far as sayings like these 
are sentiments, and not mere words, there must be 
in our feelings and conduct toward and for our fel- 
low-men in general a kindness, forbearance, self-for- 
getfulness, and self-sacrifice similar to that of which, 
toward our near kindred, we would not confess our 
selves incapable. Here it must be borne in mind that 
the precepts of Christianity represent the perfection 
which should be our constant aim and our only goal, 
not the stage of attainment which we are conscious 
of having reached, or of being able to reach with 
little effort. 

The love of enemies is also enjoined upon us by 
Jesus Christ. Is this possible ? Why not ? There 
are cases where one's nearest kindred are his worst 
enemies ; and we have known instances in which love 
has survived this rudest of all trials. Were the Chris- 
tian idea of universal brotherhood a profound senti- 
ment, it would not be quenched by enmity, however 
bitter. Enmity toward ourselves need not affect oui 



150 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

estimate of one's actual merit or claims. If we should 
not think the worse of a man because he was the 
enemy of some one else, why should we think the 
worse of him because he is our enemy ? He may have 
mistaken our character and our dispositions ; and if 
so, is he more culpable for this than for any other mis- 
take ? Or if, on the other hand, he has some substan- 
tial reason for disliking us, we should either remove 
the cause, or submit to the dislike without feeling ag- 
grieved by it. At any rate we can obey the precept, 
" Do good to them that hate you ; " and this is the 
only way, and an almost infallible way, in which the 
enmity may be overcome, and superseded by relations 
of mutual kindness and friendship 



CHAPTER XL 

FORTITUDE; OR DUTIES WITH REFERENCE TO 
UNAVOIDABLE EVILS AND SUFFERINGS. 

HTHERE are, in almost every prolonged human ex- 
perience, privations and sufferings to be endured, 
disappointments to be submitted to, obstacles and 
difficulties to be surmounted and overcome. From 
whatever source these elements of experience proceed, 
even if from blind chance, or from fate (which de- 
notes the utterance or decree of arbitrary and irrespon- 
sible power), the strong man will brace himself up to 
bear them ; the wise man will shape his conduct by 
them; the man of lofty soul will rise above them. 
But the temper in which they will be borne, yielded 
to, or surmounted, must be contingent on the belief 
concerning them. If they are regarded as actual evils, 
they will probably be endured with sullenness, or 
submitted to with defiance and scorn, or surmounted 
with pride and self -inflation. Even in the writings of 
the later Stoics, which abound in edifying precepts of 
fortitude and courage under trial, there is an under- 
tone of defiance, as if the sufferer were contending 
with a hostile force, and a constant tendency to extol 
and almost deify the energy of soul which the good 
man displays in fighting with a hard destiny. If, on 
the other hand, physical evils are regarded as wise and 



152 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

benign appointments of the Divine love and father- 
hood, the spirit in which they are borne and struggled 
against is characterized by tenderness, meekness, hu- 
mility, trust, and hope. It is instructive in this re- 
gard to read alternately the Stoics and St. Paul, and 
to contrast their magnanimous, but grim and stern 
resignation, with the jubilant tone in which, a hundred 
times over, and with a vast variety of gladsome utter- 
ance, he repeats the sentiment contained in those 
words, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." As 
ours is the Christian theory as to the (so-called) evils 
of human life, we shall recognize it in our treatment 
of the several virtues comprehended under the gen- 
eral title of Fortitude. 

SECTION 1. 
PATIENCE. 1 

Patience is incumbent on us, only under inevita- 
ble sufferings or hardships, or under such as are in- 
curred in the discharge of manifest duty, or for the 
benefit of our fellow-men. Needless sufferings or pri- 
vations we are bound to shun or to escape, not to 
bear. The caution and foresight by which they may 

1 The reader need not be told that patience and passion are derived from 
different participles of the same verb. Patience comes from the present 
participle, and fitl : igly denotes the spirit in which present suffering should 
he met ; while passion comes from the perfect or past participle, and as 
fittingly denotes the condition ensuing upon any physical, mental, or moral 
affection, induced from without, which has been endured without protest 
or resistance. 



PATIENCE. 158 

be evaded hold an essential place among the duties of 
prudence. Nor doer reason or religion sanction self- 
imposed burdens or hardships of any kind, whether 
in penance for wrong-doing, as a means of purchas- 
ing the Divine favor, or as a mode of spiritual disci- 
pline. 

Patience implies serenity, cheerfulness, and hope- 
fulness, under burdens and trials. It must be distin- 
guished from apathy, which is a temperament, not a 
virtue. There are some persons whose sensibilities 
are so sluggish that they are incapable of keen suffer- 
ing, and of profound and lasting sorrow. We can 
hardly call this a desirable temperament ; for its ca- 
pacity of enjoyment is equally defective, and, as there 
is more happiness than misery in almost every life, he 
whose susceptibility of both pain and pleasure is quick 
and strong is, on the whole, the gainer thereby. The 
serenity of patience requires vigorous self-command. 
It is essential, first of all, to control, and as far as 
possible to suppress, the outward tokens of pain and 
grief. They, like all modes of utterance, deepen the 
feeling they express ; while a firm and self-contained 
bearing enhances the fortitude which it indicates. 
Control must also be exercised over the thoughts, that 
they be abstracted from the painful experience, and 
employed on themes that will fill and task them. 
Mental industry is the best relief that mere philos- 
ophy has for pain and sorrow : and though it cer- 
tainly is not a cure, it never fails to be of service as 
a palliative. Even when bodily distress or infirmity 



154 MO HAL PHILOSOPHY. 

renders continuous thought impossible, the effort of 
recollection, or the employment of the mind in mat- 
ters too trivial for its exercise in health, may relieve 
the weariness and lighten the stress of suffering. Nor 
let devices of this sort be deemed unworthy of a place 
even among duties ; for they are often essential means 
to ends of high importance. They assert and main 
tain the rightful supremacy of the mind over the 
body ; they supersede that morbid brooding upon 
painful experiences which generates either melancholy 
or querulousness ; and they leave in the moral nature 
an unobstructed entrance to all soothing and elevat- 
ing influences. 

Cheerfulness in the endurance of pain and hardship 
must result in great part from the belief. If I regard 
myself as irresistibly subject to an automatic Nature, 
whose wheels may bruise or crush me at any moment, 
I know not why or how I could be cheerful, even in 
such precarious health or prosperity as might faL to 
my lot ; and there could certainly be no reassuring 
aspect to my adverse fortune. But if I believe that 
under a fatherly Providence there can be no suffering 
without its ministry of mercy, no loss without its 
greater gain within my reach and endeavor, no hard- 
ship without its reflex benefit in inward growth and 
energy, then I can take and bear the inevitable bur- 
dens of this earthly life in the same spirit in which I 
often assume burdens not imposed upon me from 
without, for the more than preponderant benefit which 
I hope to derive from them. But if I have this faith 



HOPE ESSENTIAL TO PATIENCE 156 

in a benignant Providence which will not afflict me 
uselessly, I am under obligation not tc let my faith, 
if real, remain inactive in my seasons of pain, loss, or 
grief . I am bound so to ponder on my assured be- 
lief, and on such proofs of it as may he in my past 
experience, that it shall give its hue to my condition, 
its tone to my thought, its direction to the whole 
current of my sentiment and feeling. Thus may en- 
durance be not only calm, but cheerful, because per- 
vaded by the conviction that at the heart of all that 
seems evil there is substantial good. 

Yet, it cannot be denied that there are life-long 
burdens and griefs, — incurable illnesses, irretrievable 
losses, bereavements that will never cease to be felt, 
and cannot be replaced. Especially in advanced 
years there are infirmities, disabilities, and privations, 
which cannot by any possibility have a resultant rev- 
enue equivalent to what they take from us ; for in old 
age the growth of character is too slow to be worth 
the sacrifice which in earlier life may be more than 
compensated by the consciousness of spiritual enlarge- 
ment and increase. How shall these burdens be 
borne cheerfully ? They cannot, unless they be also 
borne hopefully. But if there be presented to the 
faith, beyond the earthly life, a future, the passage 
into which is to be made the easier by loss and sorrow 
here ; if families are there to be reunited, and void 
places in the affections filled again ; if worthy hopes, 
seemingly disappointed, are only postponed for a 
richer and happier fulfilment, — there is in that fu- 



156 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

tore exhaustless strength for solace and support under 
what must be endured here. Earthly trial must seem 
light and momentary in view of perfect and eternal 
happiness ; and thus the hope that lays hold on an 
infinite domain of being is coined into utilities for the 
daily needs of the tried, suffering, afflicted, and age- 
bowed, supplying to patience an element without 
which it cannot be made perfect. 



SECTION IL 

SUBMISSION. 

There are events, seemingly adverse, which in 
themselves are transient, and inflict no permanent dis- 
comfort, but which necessitate the surrender of cher- 
ished expectations, the change of favorite plans, it 
may be, the life-long abandonment of aims and hopes 
that had held the foremost place in the anticipated 
future. Here submission of some sort is a necessity. 
But the submission may be querulous and repining ; 
it may be bitter and resentful ; it may be stern and 
rigid. In the last of these types only can there be 
any semblance of virtue : and this last can be vir- 
tuous, only where inevitable events are attributed to 
Fate, and not to Providence. But if a wise and kind 
Providence presides over human affairs, its decrees 
are our directory. The very events which hedge in, 
mark out our way. The tree which has its upward 
growth checked spreads its branches ; that which is 



SUBMISSION AN ACTIVE VIRTUE. 167 

circumscribed in its lateral expansion attains the 
greater height. The tendrils of the vine are guided 
by the very obstacles placed in its way. Thus, in 
human life, impassable barriers in one direction pre- 
scribe aims and endeavors in a different direction. 
The things that we cannot do determine the things 
that we ought to do. The growth which is impeded 
must give place to growth of a different type, and to 
us undoubtedly more wholesome, more congenial with 
our capacities, more conducive to our true well-being. 
What seem obstacles may be supports, giving the 
best possible direction to our active powers, and so 
training our desires and affections as to lead to higher 
happiness and more substantial good than could have 
otherwise been attained. 

Submission, then, must be grounded in faith. 
The inevitable must be to us the appointment of Om- 
niscient Love. In our childhood the very regimen and 
discipline that were least to our taste proceeded often 
from the wisest counsels, and in due time we acqui- 
esced in them as judicious and kind, nor would we in 
the retrospect have had them otherwise. As little as 
we then knew what was best for our well-being in the 
nearer future, we may now know as to what is best 
for us in a remote future, whether in the present or 
in a higher state of being % All that remains for us is 
acquiescence, cheerful and hopeful, in a Wisdom that 
cannot err, in a Love which can will only the best of 
which we are capable. 

Submission is not merely a passive, but equally 



158 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

an active virtue. Inevitable events impose imper- 
ative duties. In the direction which they indicate 
there is work for us, of self -culture, of kindness, of 
charity. Our characters can be developed, not by 
}delding, however cheerfully, to what seem misfor- 
tunes, but by availing ourselves of the opportunities 
which they present, in place of those of which they 
have deprived us. When the way we had first 
chosen is barred against us, we are not to he still, but 
to move onward with added diligence on the way that 
is thus opened to us. If outward success is arrested 
and reverted, there is only the more reason for im- 
proving the staple of our inward being. If those 
dearest to us have passed beyond the reach of our 
good offices, there are the more remote that may be 
brought near, and made ours, by our beneficence, 
[f our earthly life is rendered desolate, the affections, 
hopes, and aims thus unearthed may by our spiritual 
industry and thrift be trained heavenward. All this 
is included in full submission to the will of the Divine 
providence ; for that will is not our loss, disappoint- 
ment, or suffering, but our growth, by means of it, in 
quantity of mental and spiritual life, in capacity of 
duty, and in the power of usefulness. 

SECTION m. 

COURAGE. 

Patience, as its name imports, is a passive quality ; 
Submission blends the passive and the active; while 



PHYSICAL COURAGE. 159 

Courage is preeminently an active virtue. Patience 
resigns itself to what must be endured ; submission 
conforms itself to what it gladly would, but cannot 
reverse ; courage resists what it cannot evade, sur- 
mounts what it cannot remove, and declines no con 
Qict in which it is honorable to engage. It is obvious 
that the occasions for these virtues are widely differ- 
ent. Patience has its place where calm and cheerful 
endurance is the only resource ; submission, where 
there must be voluntary self-adaptation to altered 
circumstances ; courage, where there is threatened 
evil which strenuous effort can avert, mitigate, or 
subdue. 

Courage is a virtue, only when it is a necessity. 
There is no merit in seeking danger, in exciting op- 
position, in courting hostility. Indeed, conduct of 
this description more frequently proceeds from per- 
sons who know themselves cowards and fear to be 
thought so, than from those who are actually pos- 
sessed of courage. But there are perils, encounters, 
enmities, which cannot by any possibility be avoided, 
and there are others which can be avoided only by 
the sacrifice of principle, or by the surrender of op- 
portunities for doing good, and which, therefore, to a 
virtuous man are inevitable. 

The physical courage, commonly so called, which 
is prompt and fearless in the presence of imminent 
danger, or in armed conflict with enemies, may be, or 
may not be, a virtue. It may proceed from a mind 
too shallow and frivolous to appreciate the worth of 



160 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

life or the magnitude of the peril that threatens it ; 
it may, as often in the case of veteran soldiers, be the 
result of discipline without the aid of principle ; or it 
may depend wholly on intense and engrossing excite- 
ment, so that he who would march fearlessly at the 
head of a forlorn hope might quail before a solitary 
foe. But if one be, in the face of peril, at the same 
time calm and resolute, self-collected and firm, cau- 
tious and bold, fully aware of all that he must en- 
counter and unfalteringly brave in meeting it, such 
courage is a high moral attainment. Its surest source 
is trust in the Divine providence, — the fixed convic- 
tion that the inevitable cannot be otherwise than of 
benignant purpose and ministry, though that purpose 
may be developed and that ministry effected only in 
a higher state of being. To this faith must be added 
a strong sense of one's manhood, and of his superiority 
by virtue of that manhood over all external surround- 
ings and events. We are conscious of a rightful su- 
premacy over the outward world, and deem it un- 
worthy to succumb, without internecine resistance, to 
any force by which we may be assailed, whether that 
force be a power of nature or a wrongful assault from 
a fellow-man. It is the presence of this consciousness 
that wins our admiration for all genuine heroism, and 
the absence of it at the moment of need that makes 
cowardice contemptible. 

There is a moral courage required in pursuing our 
legitimate course in life, or in discharging our man- 
ifest duty, notwithstanding straitnesses, hindrances. 






MORAL COURAGE. 161 

obstacles, to which the feeble and timid could not but 
yield. The constituent elements of this type of cour- 
age are precisely the same that are needed in the en- 
counter with physical peril. In both cases it is 
equally unmanly to succumb until we have resisted to 
the utmost. But while physical courage can at best 
only insure our safety, moral courage contributes es- 
sentially to the growth of mind and character ; and 
the larger the opportunity for its exercise, the greater 
will be the mass of mind, the quantity of character, 
the power of duty and of usefulness. Straitnesses 
develop richer resources than they bar. Hindrances 
nurture hardihood of spirit in the struggle against 
them, or in the effort to neutralize them. Obstacles, 
when surmounted, give one a higher position than 
could be attained on an unobstructed path. The 
school of difficulty is that in which we have our most 
efficient training for eminence, whether of capacity or 
of moral excellence. What are accounted inevitable 
evils are, when met with courage, only benefits and 
blessings, inasmuch as they bring into full and vig- 
orous exercise the hardier muscles and sinews of the 
inner man, to measure strength with them or to rise 
above them. 

Courage is needed in the profession and mainte- 
nance of the true and the right, when denied, assailed, 
or vilipended. Communities never move abreast in 
the progress of opinion. There are always pioneer 
minds and consciences ; and the men who are in ad- 
vance of their time must encounter obloquy at least, 
11 



162 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

often persecution, loss, hardship, sometimes legal pen 
alties and disabilities. Under such circumstances, 
there are doubtless many more that inwardly ac- 
knowledge the unpopular truth or the contested right, 
than there are who are willing to avow and defend 
their belief. Many are frightened into false utterance 
or deceptive silence. But there must be in such 
minds a conscious mendacity, fatal to their own self- 
respect, and in the highest degree detrimental to their 
moral selfhood. It demands and at the same time 
nurtures true greatness of soul to withstand the cur- 
rent of general opinion, to defy popular prejudice, to 
make one's self " of no reputation " in order to pre- 
serve his integrity unimpaired. Therefore is it that, 
in the lapse of time, the very men who have been 
held in the lowest esteem rise into eminence in the 
general regard, sometimes while they are still living, 
oftener with a succeeding generation. Martyrs in 
their day, they receive the crown of martyrdom when 
the work which they commenced is consummated. 
The history of all the great reforms which have been 
successive eras in the moral progress of Christendom 
is full of names, once dishonored, now among the 
foremost of their race. 

This type of courage has, in less enlightened ages 
than our own, been made illustrious by those who 
have sacrificed life rather than deny or suppress 
beliefs which they deemed of vital moment. It can 
hardly be anticipated that the civilized world will 
recede so far into barbarism as to light again the 



THE COURAGE OF PHILANTHROPY. 163 

death-flame of persecution ; but it may be questioned 
whether the chronic sacrifice of all which men most 
desire in life requires or manifests less of heroism than 
in earlier times furnished victims for the arena or the 
stake. 

In the moral hierarchy the first rank is probably 
due to the courage that inspires and sustains ardu- 
ous and perilous philanthropic enterprise. The 
martyr for opinion suffers or dies rather than stain 
his soul with the positive guilt of falsehood ; while 
the philanthropist might evade toil and danger with- 
out committing any actual sin, or making himself 
liable to censure or disapproval either from God or 
man. In the former case, hardship or danger is ren- 
dered inevitable by the felt necessity of self-respect ; 
in the latter, by the urgency of a love for man equal 
or superior to the love for self. As examples of 
this highest type of courage, it may suffice to name 
Howard, whose labors for prison-reform were pursued 
at the well-known risk and the ultimate cost of his 
life ; Florence Nightingale and the noble sisterhood 
inaugurated by her, who have won all the untarnished 
and undisputed laurels of recent wars on both sides of 
the Atlantic ; and the Christian missionaries to sav- 
age tribes and in pestilential climates, who have often 
gone to their work with as clear a consciousness of 
deadly peril as if they had been on their way to a 
battle-field. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ORDER; OR DUTIES AS TO OBJECTS UNDER 
ONE'S OWN CONTROL. 

r PHERE are many duties that are self-defined and 
self -limited. Thus, the ordinary acts of justice and 
many of the charities of daily life include in them- 
selves the designation of time, place, and measure. 
There are other duties, of equal obligation, which 
admit of wide variance as to these particulars, but 
which can be most worthily and efficiently performed 
only when reference is had to them. There are, also, 
many acts, in themselves morally indifferent, which 
acquire their moral character as right or wrong solely 
from one or more of these particulars. Thus recrea- 
tions that are innocent and fitting on Saturday, may 
be inconsistent with the proprieties of Sunday ; con- 
versation and conduct perfectly befitting the retire- 
ment of home may be justly offensive in a place of 
public concourse ; or there may be great guilt in the 
excessive use of that which used in moderation may 
be blameless, fitting, and salutary. 



DISTRIBUTION OF TIME 166 

SECTION I. 
TIME. 

A life-time is none too long for a life's work. 
Hence the fitness, and therefore the duty, of a careful 
economy of time. This economy can be secured only 
by a systematic arrangement of one's hours of labor, 
relaxation, and rest, and the assignment to successive 
portions of the day, week, or year, of their appropriate 
uses. The amount of time wasted, even by an indus- 
trious man who has no method or order in his indus^ 
try, bears a very large proportion to the time profit- 
ably employed. In the needlessly frequent change 
of occupations, there is at each beginning and ending 
a loss of the working power, which can neither start 
on a new career at full speed, nor arrest itself with- 
out previous slackening. This waste is made still 
greater by the suspense or vacillation of purpose of 
those who not only have no settled plans of industry, 
but often know not what to do, or are liable, so soon 
as they are occupied in one way, to feel themselves 
irresistibly drawn in a different direction. 

But in the distribution of time a man should be 
the master, not the slave of his system. The reg- 
ular work and the actual duty of the moment do not 
always coincide. Due care for health, the opportu- 
nity for earned and needed recreation, the clainu 
of charity, courtesy, and hospitality, in fine, the im- 
mediate urgency of any dutv selfward, manward, or 






16b' MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

Godward, should always take precedence of routine- 
work however wisely planned. Obstinate adherence 
to system may lead to more and greater criminal 
omissions of duty than would be incurred, even in the 
spasmodic industry which takes its impulse from the 
passing moment. It must be remembered that time- 
liness is the essential element of right and obligation 
in many things that ought to be done, especially in 
all forms of charity, alike in great services, and in 
those lesser amenities and kindnesses which contribute 
so largely to the charm of society and the happiness 
of domestic life. There are many good offices which, 
performed too late, were better left undone, — cour- 
tesies which, postponed, are incivilities, — attentions 
which, out of season, are needless and wearisome. 

Every day, every waking hour has its own duty, 
either its special work, or its due portion of one's nor- 
mal life-work. Procrastination is, therefore, as un- 
wise as it is immoral, or rather, it is immoral because 
it is unwise and unfitting. The morrow has its own 
appropriate duties ; and if to-day's work be thrown 
into it, the massing of two days' good work into one 
exceeds ordinary ability. The consequence is, either 
that both days' works are imperfectly performed, or 
that part of what fitly belongs to the morrow is 
pushed farther on, and the derangement of duty made 
chronic. Thus there are persons who are always in 
arrears with their engagements and occupations, — in 
chase, as it were, after duties which they never lose 
from sight, and never overtake. 



PUNCTUALITY. 167 

Hardly less grave, though less common, is the 
error of those who anticipate duty, and do to-day 
what they ought to do to-morrow. The work thus 
anticipated may be superseded, or may be performed 
under better auspices and with fewer hindrances in 
its own time ; while it can hardly fail to interfere 
injuriously with the fit employment or due relaxation 
of the passing day. Moreover, the habit of thus per- 
forming work before its time at once betokens and 
intensifies an uneasy, self-distrusting frame of mind, 
unfavorable to vigorous effort, and still more so to the 
quiet enjoyment of needed rest and recreation. There 
are those, who are perpetually haunted by the fore- 
cast shadows, not only of fixed, but of contingent 
obligations and duties, — shadows generally larger 
than the substance, and often wholly destitute of sub- 
stance. 

Punctuality l denotes the most scrupulous precision 
as to time, — exactness to a moment in the observance 
of all times that can be designated or agreed upon. 
In matters with which we alone are concerned, we 
undoubtedly have of right, and may often very fit- 
tingly exercise, the dispensing power. Thus, in the 
arrangement of our own pursuits, the clock may 
measure and direct our industry, without binding us 
by its stroke. It is often of more consequence that 
we finish what is almost done, than that we change 
our work because the usual hour for a change has 
arrived. But where others are concerned, rigid 

1 From punctum, a point. 



168 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

punctuality is an imperative duty. A fixed time foi 
an assembly, a meeting of a committee or board of 
trust, or a business interview, is a virtual contract 
into which each person concerned has entered with 
every other, and the strict rules that apply to con- 
tracts of all kinds are applicable here. Failure in 
punctuality is dishonesty. It involves the theft of 
time, which to some men is money's worth, to others 
is worth more than money. It ought not to surprise 
us if one wantonly or habitually negligent in this 
matter should prove himself oblivious of other and 
even more imperative obligations ; for the dullness of 
conscience and the obscure sense of right, indicated 
by the frequent breach of virtual contracts as to time, 
betoken a character too feeble to maintain its integ- 
rity against any strong temptation. 



SECTION n. 

PLACE. 

The trite maxim, A place for everything, and 
everything in its place, so commends itself to the 
sense of fitness, as hardly to need exposition or en- 
forcement; yet while no maxim is more geneially 
admitted, scarce any is so frequently violated in prac- 
tice. In duty, the elements of time and place are in- 
timately blended. Disorder in place generates de- 
rangement in time. The object which is out of place 
can be found only by the waste of time ; and the most 



ORDER IN DOMESTIC LIFE. 169 

faithful industry loses a large part of its value when 
its materials are wanting where they ought to be, and 
must be sought where they ought not to be. 

Apart from considerations of utility, order is an 
SBsthetic duty. It is needed to satisfy the sense of 
beauty. Its violation offends the eye, insults the 
taste. The aesthetic nature craves and claims culture. 
It has abundant provision made for it in external 
nature ; but so large a part of lif e must be passed 
within doors, at least in a climate like ours, that it is 
starved and dwarfed, if there be not in interior ar- 
rangements some faint semblance of the symmetry 
and harmony of the universe. To effect this needs 
neither abundance nor costliness of material. A 
French man or woman will charm the eye at a cost 
which in England would be represented by bare and 
squalid poverty. A Parisian shop-window will make 
with a few francs' worth of goods an exhibition of 
artistical beauty which might challenge the most fas- 
tidious criticism. These effects are produced solely 
by prime reference to fitness of place, — to orderly 
arrangement, — to a symmetry which all can under- 
stand, and which any one might copy. Our very 
capacity of receiving gratification from this source is 
the measure of our duty in this regard. If with the 
simplest materials we can give pleasure to the soul 
through the eye by merely assigning its lit place to 
every object, order is among the plainest dictates of 
beneficence. 

Order is essential to domestic comfort and well- 



170 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

being, and thus to all the virtues which have their 
earliest and surest nurture in domestic life. There 
are homes at once affluent and joyless, groaning with 
needless waste and barren of needed comfort, in which 
the idea of repose seems as irrelevant as Solomon's 
figure of lying down on the top of a mast, and all 
from a pervading spirit of disorder. In such dwell- 
ings there is no love of home. The common house is 
a mere lodging and feeding place. Society is sought 
elsewhere, pleasure elsewhere ; and for the young and 
easily impressible there is the strongest inducement 
to those modes of dissipation in which vice conceals 
its grossness behind fair exteriors and under attrac- 
tive forms. On the other hand, the well-ordered 
house affords to its inmates the repose, comfort, and 
enjoyment which they crave and need, and for those 
whose characters are in the process of formation may 
neutralize allurements to evil which might else be 
irresistible. 

SECTION m 

MEASURE. 

There are many objects, as to which the question 
of duty is a question of more or less. To this class 
belong not only food and drink, but all forms of lux- 
ury, indulgence, recreation, and amusement. In all 
these the choice lies between excess, abstinence, and 
temperance. The tendency to excess is intensely 
strong, when not restrained by prudence or principle. 



INTEMPERANCE. YH 

This tendency is by no means confined to the appetite 
for intoxicating liquors, though modern usage has 
restricted to excess in this particular the term intem- 
perance, which properly bears a much more extended 
signification. There is reason to believe that there is 
fully as much intemperance in food as in drink, and 
with at least equally ruinous consequences as to ca- 
pacity, character, health, and life, — with this differ- 
ence only, that gluttony stupefies and stultifies, while 
drunkenness maddens ; and that the glutton is merely 
a dead weight on the community, while the drunk 
ard is an active instrument of annoyance and peril. 
There are probably fewer who sink into an absolutely 
beastly condition by intemperance in food than by 
intemperance in drink ; but of persons who do not 
expose themselves to open scandal, those whose brains 
are muddled, whose sensibilities are coarsened, and 
whose working power is impaired by over-eating, are 
more numerous than those in whom similar effects 
are produced by over-free indulgence in intoxicating 
drinks. Intemperance in amusements, also, is not 
uncommon, and would undoubtedly be more preva- 
lent than it is, were not the inevitable necessity of 
labor imposed on most persons from a very early 
period. In this matter the limit between temperance 
and excess is aptly fixed by the term recreation, as 
applied to all the gay and festive portions of life. 
Re-creation is making over, that is, replacing the 
waste of Asue, brain-power, and physical and mental 
energy occasioned by hard work. Temperance per- 



172 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

mits the most generous indulgence of sport, mirth, 
and gayety that can be claimed as needful or condu- 
cive to this essential use, but excludes all beyond this 
measure. 

Abstinence from all forms of luxury and recreation, 
and from food and drink beyond the lowest demands 
of subsistence, has, under various cultures, been re- 
garded as a duty, as an appropriate penance for sin, 
as a means of spiritual growth, as a token of advanced 
excellence. This notion had its origin in the dualistic 
philosophy or theology of the East. It was believed 
that the sovereignty of the universe was divided 
between the semi-omnipotent principles of good and 
evil, and that the earth and the human body were 
created by the evil principle, — by Satan or his ana- 
logue. Hence it was inferred that the evil principle 
could be abjured and defied, and the good principle 
propitiated in no way so effectually as by renouncing 
the world and mortifying the body. Fasting, as a re- 
ligious observance, originated in this belief. It was 
imported from the East. The Hebrew fasts were not 
established by Moses ; they were evidently borrowed 
from Babylon, and seem to have been regarded with 
no favor by the prophets. The Founder of Christi- 
anity prescribed no fast, nor have we any reason to 
believe that his immediate disciples regarded atsti- 
nence as a duty. Christian asceticism in all its forms 
is, like the Jewish fasts, of Oriental origin, and had 
its first developments in close connection with those 
hybrids of Christianity and Oriental philosophy of 



TEMPERANCE. \ f 3 

which the dualism already mentioned forms a promi- 
nent feature. 

With regard to all objects of appetite, desire, and 
enjoyment, temperance is evidently fitting, and there- 
fore a duty, unless there be specific reasons for ab- 
stinence. Temperance demands and implies moral 
activity. In the temperate man the appetites, desires, 
and tastes have their continued existence, and need 
vigilant and wise control, so that he has always work 
to do, a warfare to wage ; and as conflict with the 
elements gives vigor to the body, so does conflict with 
the body add strength continually to the moral nature. 
The ascetic may have a hard struggle at the outset ; 
but his aim is to extirpate his imagined enemies in 
the bodily affections, and when these are completely 
mortified, or put to death, there remains no more for 
him to do, and moral idleness and lethargy ensue. 
Simon Stylites, who spent thirty-seven years on pil- 
lars of different heights, had probably stupefied his 
moral faculties and sensibilities as effectually as he 
had crushed to death the appetites and cravings of 
the body. It must not be forgotten that the body no 
less than the soul is of God's building, and that in 
his purpose all the powers and capacities of the body 
are good in their place and uses, and therefore to be 
controlled and governed, not destroyed or suppressed. 
The mediaeval saint, feeding on the offal of the streets, 
was unwittingly committing sacrilege, by degrading 
and imbruting an appetite for which God had pro- 
vided decent and wholesome nutriment. 



174 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Temperance is better than abstinence, also, because 
the moderate use of the objects of desire is a source 
of refining and elevating influences. It is not with- 
out meaning that, in common speech, the possession 
or loss of the senses is made synonymous with mental 
sanity or derangement. By the temperate gratifica 
tion of the senses the mind is sustained in its fresh- 
ness, vigor, and serenity ; while when they are per- 
verted by excess, impaired by age, or deadened by 
disease, in that same proportion the mental powers 
are distracted, enfeebled, or benumbed. Taste, the 
faculty through which we become conversant with 
the whole realm of beauty, and than which devotion 
has no more efficient auxiliary, derives its name from 
what the ascetic deems the lowest animal enjoyment, 
which, however, has its range of the very highest 
ministries. The table is the altar of home-love and 
of hospitality, and there are clustered around it un- 
numbered courtesies, kindnesses, and charities that 
make a large part of the charm and joy of life. So 
far is thoughtfulness for its. graceful and generous 
service from indicating a low type of character, that 
there is hardly any surer index of refinement and ele- 
gant culture than is furnished by the family meal. 
Similar remarks apply to the entire range of pleasur- 
able objects and experiences. While there are none 
of them in which excess is safe, they all, when en- 
joyed in moderation, stimulate the mental powers, 
develop and train the aesthetic faculty, and multiply 
beneficial relations alike with nature and with society. 



ABSTINENCE, WHEN A DUTY. 175 

Temperance, rather than abstinence, is needed on 
grounds connected with social economy. Labor 
for the mere necessaries of life occupies hardly a tithe 
of human industry. A nation of ascetics would be a 
nation of idlers. It is the demand for objects of en- 
joyment, taste, luxury, that floats ships, dams rivers, 
stimulates invention, feeds prosperity, and creates the 
wealth of nations. It is only excess and extravagance 
that sustain and aggravate social inequalities, wrongs, 
wants, and burdens ; while moderate, yet generous 
use oils the springs and speeds the wheels of univer- 
sal industry, progress, comfort, and happiness. 

But there are cases in which abstinence, rathei 
than temperance, is a duty. 

Past excess may render temperance hardly pos- 
sible. From the derangement consequent upon excess, 
an appetite may lose the capacity of healthy exercise. 
In such a case, as we would amputate a diseased and 
useless limb, we should suppress the appetite which 
we can no longer control. Physiological researches 
have shown that the excessive use of intoxicating 
drinks, when long continued, produces an organic con 
dition, in which the slightest indulgence is liable to 
excite a craving so intense as to transcend the control 
of the will. 

Inherited proclivities may, in like manner, render 
temperance so difficult as to make abstinence a duty. 
It is conceivable that a nation or a community may, 
9j the prevalence of excess in past generations, be 
characterized by so strong a tendency to intemperance 



176 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

as to render general abstinence a prerequisite to gen- 
eral temperance. 

Abstinence may also become a duty, if to many 
around us our example in what we may enjoy inno- 
cently would be ensnaring and perilous. The recrea- 
tion, harmless in itself, which by long abuse has be- 
come a source of corruption, it may be our duty to 
forego. The indulgence, safe for us, which would be 
unsafe for our associates, it may be incumbent on us 
to resign. The food, the drink which would make 
our table a snare to our guests, we may be bound to 
refrain from, though for ourselves there be in it ne 
latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a 
matter in which each person must determine his duty 
for himself alone, and in which no one is authorized 
to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscien- 
tious man a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue 
from its evil associations an amusement or indulgence 
in itself not only harmless, but salutary ; and there 
may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides 
of a question of social morality falling under this 
head. The joyous side of life must be maintained. 
The young, sanguine, and happy will at all events 
have recreations, games, festivities, and of these there 
is not a single element, material, or feature that has 
not been abused, perverted, or invested with associa- 
tions offensive to a pure moral taste. To disown and 
oppose them all in the name of virtue, is to prescribe 
a degree of abstinence which can have the assent or 
those only who have outlived the capacity of enjoj- 






GOOD MANNERS. 177 

ment. The more judicious course is to favor, or at 
least to tolerate such modes of indulgence as may for 
the present be the least liable to abuse, or such as 
may in prospect be the safest in their moral influence, 
and by sanctioning these to render more emphatic and 
efficient the disapproval and rejection of such as are 
intrinsically wrong and evil. 



SECTION IY. 

MANNERS. 

The ancients had but one word for manners and 
morals. It might be well if the same were the case 
with us, — yet with this essential difference, that 
while they degraded morals to the level of manners, a 
higher culture would lead us to raise manners to the 
level of morals. The main characteristics of good 
manners are comprised in the three preceding Sec- 
tions. They are the observance, in one's demeanor 
and conduct toward others, of the fitnesses of time 
and place, and of the due and graceful mean between 
overwrought, extravagant, or fantastic manifestations 
of regard on the one hand, and coldness, supercilious- 
ness, or indifference on the other. Courtesies, like 
more substantial kindnesses, are neutralized by delay, 
and, when slow, seem forced and reluctant. Atten- 
tions, which in their place are gratifying, may, if 
misplaced, occasion only mortification and embarrass- 
ment, as when civilities befitting interior home-life 
1$ 



178 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

are rehearsed for the public eye and ear. Nor is 
there any department of conduct in which excess or 
deficiency is more painfully felt, — a redundance of 
compliments and assiduities tending to silence and 
abash the recipient, while their undue scanting in- 
flicts a keen sense of slight, neglect, and injury. 

Politeness must, indeed, in order even to appear 
genuine, be the expression of sincere kindness. There 
is no pretence so difficult to maintain as the false show 
of genial and benevolent feeling. The mask cannot 
be so fitted to the face as not to betray its seams and 
sutures. Yet kindness is not of itself politeness. Its 
spontaneous expressions may be rude and awkward ; 
or they may take forms not readily understood and 
appreciated. There are conventional modes of polite 
demeanor no less than of courteous speech. These 
modes may have no intrinsic fitness, yet they acquire 
a fitness from their long and general use ; and while 
the mere repetition of stereotyped formulas whether 
in word or deportment is justly offensive, he who 
would have his politeness recognized and enjoyed 
must beware lest he depart too widely from the 
established sign-language of society. There is a 
brusquerie often underlying hearty kindness and good 
fellowship, which at the outset pains, wounds, and 
repels those brought within its sphere, and which the 
most intimate friends endure and excuse rather than 
approve. 

Politeness is to be regarded as an indispensable 
duty. It is believed that from its neglect or violation 






POLITENESS. 179 

more discomfort ensues than from any other single 
cause, and in some circles and conditions of society 
more than from all other causes combined. There 
are neighborhoods and communities that are seldom 
disturbed by grave offences against the criminal law, 
but none which can insure itself against the affronts, 
enmities, wounded sensibilities, rankling grievances, 
occasioned by incivility and rudeness. Moreover, 
there are persons entirely free from vice, perhaps os- 
tentatious in the qualities which are the opposites of 
vices, and not deficient in charitable labors and gifts, 
who cultivate discourtesy, are acrid or bitter in their 
very deeds of charity, and carry into every society a 
certain porcupine selfhood, which makes their mere 
presence annoying and baneful. Such persons, be- 
sides the suffering they inflict on individuals, are of 
unspeakable injury to their respective circles or com- 
munities, by making their very virtues unlovely, and 
piety, if they profess it, hateful. On the other hand, 
there is no truer benefactor to society — if the crea- 
tion of happiness be the measure of benefit — than 
the genuine gentleman or gentlewoman, who adds 
grace to virtue, politeness to kindness ; who under the 
guidance of a sincere fellow-feeling, studies the fit- 
nesses of speech and manner, in civility and courtesy 
endeavors to render to all their due, and in the least 
details that can affect another's happiness, does care- 
fully and conscientiously all that the meet fastidious 
sensibility could claim or desire. 



180 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

SECTION V. 
GOVERNMENT. 

The establishment and preservation of order ia 
the prime and essential function of government; 
the prevention and punishment of crime, its second- 
ary, incidental, perhaps even temporary use. In a 
perfect state of society, government would still be 
necessary ; for it would be only by the observance of 
common and mutual designations of time, place, and 
measure, that each individual member of society could 
enjoy the largest liberty and the fullest revenue from 
objects of desire, compatible with the just claims and 
rights of others. These benefits can, under no con- 
ceivable condition in which finite beings can be placed, 
be secured except by system, under a central admin- 
istration, and with the submission of individual wills 
and judgments to constituted and established au- 
thority. A bad government, then, is better than 
none ; for a bad government can exist only by doing 
a part of its appropriate work, while in a state of 
anarchy the whole of that work is left undone and 
unattempted. 

Obedience to government is, then, fitting, and 
therefore a duty, independently of all considerations 
as to the wisdom, or even the justice of its decrees 01 
statutes. If they are unwise, they yet are rules to 
which the community can conform itself, and by 
which its members can make their plans and govern 






VACILLATING LEGISLATION 181 

their expectations, while lawlessness is the negation 
alike of guidance for the present and of confidence in 
the future. If they are unjust, they yet do less wrong 
and to fewer persons, than would be done by individ- 
ual and sporadic attempts to evade or neutralize them. 
Nay, unwise and inequitable laws, to which the habits 
und the industrial relations of a people have adjusted 
themselves, are to be preferred to vacillating legisla- 
tion, though in a generally right direction. Laws 
that affect important interests should be improved 
only with reference to the virtual pledges made by 
previous legislation, and so as to guard the interests 
involved against the injurious effects of new and rev- 
olutionary measures. The tariff regulations of our 
own country will illustrate the bearing of this princi- 
ple. It forms no part of our present plan to discuss 
the mooted questions of free trade and protection. 
But in the confession of even extreme partisans on 
either side, the capital and industry of our people could 
never have suffered so much from any one tariff of du- 
ties, however injudicious, as they suffered for a series 
of years from sudden changes of policy, by which in- 
vestments that had been invited by the legislation of 
one Congress were made fruitless by the action of the 
next, and manufactures stimulated into rapid growth 
by high protective duties, were arrested and often 
ruined by their sudden repeal. The stability of laws 
is obviously a higher good than their conformity to 
the theoretical views of the more enlightened citizens. 
Except under a despotism, laws are virtually an ex 



182 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

pression of the opinion or will of the majority ; and 
laws which by any combination of favoring circum- 
stances are enacted in advance of the general opinion, 
are always liable to speedy repeal, with a double 
series of the injurious consequences which can hardly 
fail to ensue immediately on any change. 

But are there no limits to obedience ? Undoubt- 
edly there are A bad law is to be obeyed for the 
sake of order ; an immoral law is to be disobeyed for 
the sake of the individual conscience; and of the 
moral character of a particular law, or of action under 
it, the individual conscience is the only legitimate 
judge. Where the law of the land and absolute right 
are at variance, the citizen is bound, not only to with- 
hold obedience, but to avow his belief, and to give it 
full expression in every legitimate form and way, by 
voice and pen, by private influence and through the 
ballot-box. But in the interest of the public order, 
it is his duty to confine his opposition to legal and 
constitutional methods, to refrain from factious and 
seditious resistance, to avoid, if possible, the emer- 
gency in which disobedience would become his duty, 
and in case his conscience constrains him to disobedi- 
ence, still to show his respect for the majesty of law 
by quietly submitting to its penalty. The still recent 
history of our country furnishes a case in point. By 
the Fugitive -Slave Law — which the Divine provi- 
dence, indeed, repealed without waiting for the action 
of Congress — the private citizen who gave shelter, 
sustenance, or comfort to a fugitive slave ; who, 



IMMORAL LAWS. 183 

knowing his hiding-place, omitted to divulge it, or 
who, when called upon to assist in arresting him, re- 
fused his aid, was made liable to a heavy fine and a 
long imprisonment. Now as to this law, it was obvi- 
ously the duty of a citizen who regarded the slave as 
entitled to the rights of a man, to seek its repeal by 
ill constitutional methods within his power. It was 
equally his duty to refrain from all violent interference 
with the functionaries charged with its execution, and 
to avoid, if possible, all collision with the government. 
But if, without his seeking, a fugitive slave had been 
cast upon his humane offices, the question then would 
have arisen whether he should obey God or man ; and 
to this question he could have had but one answer. Yet 
his obedience to God would have lacked its crowning 
grace, if he had not meekly yielded to the penalty for 
his disobedience to the law of the land. It was by 
this course that the primitive Christians attested their 
loyalty at once to God and to " the powers that be," 
which were " ordained of God." They refused obe- 
dience to the civil authorities in matters in which 
their religious duty was compromised ; but they nei- 
ther resisted nor evaded the penalty for their disobe- 
dience. Similar was the course of the Quakers in 
England and America almost down to our own time. 
They were quiet and useful citizens, performing the 
same functions with their fellow-citizens, so far as 
their consciences permitted, and, where conscience in- 
terposed its veto, taking patiently the distraining of 
their goods, and the imprisonment of their bodies, 



184 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

until, by their blameless lives and their meek endur- 
ance, they won from the governments both of the 
mother country and of the United States, amnesty 
for their conscientious scruples. 

There may be a state of society in which it becomes 
the duty of good citizens to assume an illegal 
attitude, and to perform illegal acts, in the inter- 
est of law and order. If those who are legally in- 
trusted with executive and judicial offices are openly, 
notoriously, and persistently false to their trusts, to 
such a degree as to derange and subvert the social 
order which it is their function to maintain, good citi- 
zens, if they have the power, have undoubtedly the 
right to displace them, and to institute a provisional 
government for the temporary emergency. A case of 
this kind occurred a few years ago in San Francisco. 
The entire government of the city had for a series of 
years been under the control of ruffians and miscre- 
ants, and force and fraud had rendered the ballot-box 
an ineffectual remedy. No law-abiding citizen deemed 
his life or property safe ; gross outrages were commit- 
ted with impunity ; and thieves and murderers alone 
had the protection of the municipal authorities. De- 
spairing of legal remedy, the best citizens of all parties 
organized themselves under the direction of a Com- 
mittee of Safety, forcibly deposed the municipal mag- 
istrates and judges, brought well-known criminals to 
trial, conviction, and punishment, reestablished the 
integrity of suffrage, and resigned their power to 
functionaries lawfully elected, under whom and their 



THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION. 185 

successors the city has enjoyed a degree of order, 
tranquillity, and safety at least equal to that of any 
other great city on the continent. 

The right of revolution undoubtedly is inherent 
ill a national body politic ; but it is an extreme right. 
and is to be exercised only under the most urgent ne- 
cessity. Its conditions cannot be strictly defined, and 
its exercise can, perhaps, be justified only by its results. 
A constitutional government can seldom furnish oc- 
casion for violent revolutionary measures ; for every 
constitution has its own provisions for legal amend 
ment, and the public sentiment ripe for revolution can 
hardly fail to be strong enough to carry the amend- 
ments which it craves, through the legal processes, 
which, if slow and cumbrous, are immeasurably prefer- 
able to the employment of force and the evils of civil 
war. On the other hand, a despotic or arbitrary gov- 
ernment may admit of abrogation only by force ; and 
if its administration violates private rights, imposes 
unrighteous burdens and disabilities, suppresses the 
development of the national resources, and supersedes 
the administration of justice or the existence of equi- 
table relations between class and class or between 
man and man, the people — the rightful source and 
arbiter of government — has manifestly the right to 
assert its own authority, and to substitute a constitu- 
tion and rulers of its own choice for the sovereignty 
which has betrayed its trust. Under similai oppres- 
sion, the same right unquestionably exists in a remote 
colony, or in a nation subject by conquest to a foreign 



186 MORAL PHILOSPHY. 

power. If that power refuses the rights and privi- 
leges of subjects to a people over which it exercises 
sovereignty, and governs it in its own imagined inter- 
ests, with a systematic and persistent disregard to the 
well-being of the people thus governed, resistance is 
a right, and may become a duty. In fine, the func- 
tion of government is the maintenance of just and 
beneficent order; a government forfeits its rights 
when it is false to this function ; and the rights thus 
forfeited revert to the misgoverned people. 



CHAPTER XIH. 

CASUISTRY 

/CASUISTRY is the application of the general prin- 
^ ciples of morality to individual cases in which there 
is room for question as to duty. The question may be 
as to the obligation or the rightfulness of a particular 
act, as to the choice between two alternative courses, 
as to the measure or limit of a recognized duty, or as 
to the grounds of preference when there seems to be 
a conflict of duties. A large proportion of these cases 
disappear under any just view of moral obligation. 
Most questions of conscience have their origin in de- 
ficient conscientiousness. He who is determined to 
do the right, the whole right, and nothing but the 
right, is seldom at a loss to know what he ought to 
do. But when the aim is to evade all difficult duties 
which can be omitted without shame or the clear con- 
sciousness of wrong, and to go as close as possible to 
the boundary line between good and evil without 
crossing it, the questions that arise are often perplex- 
ing and complicated, and they are such as, in the 
interest of virtue, may fittingly remain unanswered. 
There are always those whose aim is, not to attain 
any definite, still less any indefinitely high, standard 
of goodness, but to be saved from the penal conse- 



188 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

quences of wrong-doing ; and there are even (so- 
called) religious persons, and teachers too, with whom 
this negative indemnity from punishment fills out the 
whole meaning of the sacred and significant term sal- 
vation. It must be confessed that questions which 
could emanate only from such minds, furnish a very 
large part of the often voluminous and unwieldy trea- 
tises on casuistry that have come down to us from 
earlier times, especially of that entire class of moral- 
ists whose chief endeavor is to lay out a border-path 
just outside the confines of acknowledged wrong and 
evil. 

Yet there are cases in which the most consci- 
entious persons may be in doubt as to the right. 
We can here indicate only the general principles on 
which such cases are to be decided, with a very few 
specific illustrations. 

The question of duty is often a question, not 
of principle, but of fact. It is the case, the position 
and relations of the persons or objects concerned, that 
we do not fully understand. For instance, when a 
new appeal is made for our charitable aid, in labor or 
money, the question is not whether it is our duty to 
assist in a work of real beneficence, but whether for 
the proposed object, and under the direction of those 
who make the appeal, our labor or money will be 
lucratively invested in the service of humanity. There 
are, certainly, benevolent associations and enterprises 
for the very noblest ends, whose actual utility is open 
to the gravest doubt. It is sometimes difficult even 



THE LIMIT OF DUTY. 189 

to determine a question of justice or equity, simply 
because the circumstances of the case, so far as we 
can understand them, do not define the right. In- 
stances of this class might be multiplied ; but they 
are all instances in which there is no obscurity as to 
our obligation or duty, and therefore no question for 
moral casuistry. We are, however, obviously bound, 
by considerations of fitness, to seek the fullest infor- 
mation within our power in every case in which we 
are compelled to act, or see fit to act ; nor can we 
regard action without knowledge, even though the 
motive be virtuous, as either safe or blameless. 

The measure or limit of duty is with many con- 
scientious persons a serious question. Here an exact 
definition is hardly possible, and a generous liberty 
may be given to individual taste or judgment; yet 
considerations of fitness set bounds to that liberty. 
Thus direct and express self -culture is a duty incum- 
bent on all, yet in which diversity of inclination may 
render very different degrees of diligence equally fit- 
ting and right ; but all self-centred industry is fittingly 
limited by domestic, social, and civic obligations. 
Thus, also, direct acts of beneficence are obviously 
incumbent on all ; but the degree of self-sacrifice for 
beneficent ends need not, nay, ought not to be the 
Bame for every one ; and while we hold in the highest 
admiration those who make the entire surrender of all 
that they have and are to the service of mankind, we 
have no reason to scant our esteem for those who are 
simply kind and generous, while they at the same 



190 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

time labor, spend, or save for their own benefit. In- 
deed, the world has fully as much need of the latter 
as of the former. Were the number of self-devoting 
philanthropists over-large, a great deal of the neces- 
sary business and work of life would be left undoue ; 
and did self-denying givers constitute a very numer- 
ous body, the dependent and mendicant classes would 
be much more numerous than they are ; while the 
withdrawal of expenditure for personal objects would 
paralyze industrial enterprise, and arrest the creation 
of that general wealth which contributes to the gen- 
eral comfort and happiness, and the accumulation of 
those large fortunes which are invaluable as safety- 
funds and movement-funds for the whole community. 
There are cases in which there is manifestly a con- 
flict of duties. This most frequently occurs between 
prudence and beneficence. Up to a certain point they 
coincide. No prudent man will suffer himself to con- 
tract unsocial, or selfish, or miserly habits, or to neg- 
lect the ordinary good offices and common charities of 
life. But is one bound to transcend the limits of pru- 
dence, and, without any specific grounds of personal 
obligation, to incur loss, hardship, or peril, in behalf 
of another person ? One is no doubt bound to do all 
that he could reasonably expect from another, were 
their positions reversed ; but is it his duty to do more 
than this ? In answer, it must be admitted that he 
who in such a case suffers prudence to limit his benefi- 
cence has done all that duty absolutely requires , but, 
in proportion to the warmth of his benevolence and 



ORDER OF PRECEDENCE IN DUTIES. 191 

the loftiness of his spirit and character, he will find 
himself constrained to transcend this limit, and to sac- 
rifice prudence to beneficence Thus — to take an in- 
stance from a class of events by no means infrequent 
— if I see a man in danger of drowning, it is ob 
viously my duty to do all that I can do for his rescue 
without putting my own life in jeopardy. But I owe 
him no more than this. My own life is precious to 
me and to my family, and I have a right so to regard 
it. I shall not deserve censure or self-reproach, if I 
decline exposing myself to imminent peril. Yet if I 
have the generosity and the courage which belong to 
a truly noble nature, I shall not content myself with 
doing no more than this, — I shall hazard my own 
safety if there is reason to hope that my efforts may 
have a successful issue ; and in so doing I shall per- 
form an act of heroic virtue. The same principle 
will apply to exposure, danger, and sacrifice of every 
kind, incurred for fche safety, relief, or benefit of 
others. We transgress no positive law of right, when 
we omit doing for others more than we could right- 
fully expect were we in their place. Prudence in 
such a case is our right. But it is a right which it is 
more noble to surrender than to retain; and the readi- 
ness with which and the degree in which we are will- 
ing to surrender it, may be taken as a fair criterion ol 
our moral growth and strength. 

Under the title of Justice, with the broad scope 
which we have given to it, there may be an apparent 
conflict of duties, and there are certain obvious laws 



192 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

of precedence which may cover all sucn cases. We 
should first say that our obligations to the Supreme 
Being have a paramount claim above all duties to in- 
ferior beings, had we not reason to believe that Grod 
is in no way so truly worshipped and served as bj 
acts of justice and mercy to his children. The Divine 
Teacher has given us to understand, not that there is 
no time or place too sacred for charity, but that holy 
times and places have their highest consecration in 
the love to man which love to God inspires. 

Toward men, it hardly needs to be said that jus- 
tice (in the limited and ordinary acceptation of the 
word) has the precedence of charity. Indeed, were 
it not for the prevalence of injustice — individual, 
social, and civic — there would hardly be any scope 
for the active exercise of charity. Want comes almost 
wholly from wrong. Were justice universal, that is, 
were the rights and privileges which fitly belong to 
men as men, extended to and made available by all 
classes and conditions of men, there would still be 
great inequalities of wealth and of social condition ; 
but abject and squalid poverty could hardly exist. In 
almost every individual instance, the withholding or 
delay of justice tends more or less directly toward the 
cieation of the very evils which charity relieves. No 
amount of generosity, then, can palliate injustice, or 
stand as a substitute for justice. 

As regards the persons to whom we owe offices of 
kindness or charity, it is obvious that those related 
to us by consanguinity or affinity have the first 



PERMANENT GOOD TO BE BESTOWED 193 

claim. These relations have all the elements of a 
natural alliance for mutual defence and help; and it is 
impossible that their essential duties should be faith- 
fully discharged and their fitnesses duly observed, 
without creating sympathies that in stress of need 
will find expression in active charity. In the next 
rank we may fittingly place our benefactors, if their 
condition be such as to demand a return for their 
kind offices in our behalf. Nearness in place may be 
next considered ; for the very fact that the needs of 
our neighbors are or may be within our cognizance, 
commends them especially to our charity, and enables 
us to be the more judicious and effective in their relief. 
Indeed, in smaller communities, where the dwellings 
of the rich and of the poor are interspersed, a general 
recognition of the claims of neighborhood on charity % 
would cover the field of active beneficence with an 
efficiency attainable in no other way, and at a greatly 
diminished cost of time and substance. There is yet 
another type of neighborhood, consecrated to our rev- 
erent observance by the parable of the Good Samari- 
tan. There are from time to time cases of want and 
suffering brought, without our seeking, under our im- 
mediate regard, — cast, as it were, directly upon oui 
kind offices. The person thus commended to us is, 
for the time, our nearest neighbor, nay, our nearest 
kinsman, and the very circumstances which have 
placed him in this relation to us, make him fittingly 
the foremost object of our charity. 

The question sometimes presents itself whether 

18 



194 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

we shall bestow an immediate, yet transient ben- 
efit, or a more remote, but permanent good. If 
the two are incompatible, and the former is not a 
matter of absolute necessity, the latter is to be pre- 
ferred. T^ius remunerative employment is much 
m3re beneficial than alms to an able-bodied man, and 
it is better that he suffer some degree of straitness till 
he can earn a more comfortable condition, than that 
he be first made to feel the dependence of pauperism. 
Yet if his want be entire and urgent, the delay of 
immediate relief is the part of cruelty. On similar 
grounds, beneficence which embraces a class of cases 
or persons is to be preferred to particular acts of 
kindness to individuals. Thus it seems harsh to re- 
fuse alms to an unknown street beggar ; but as such 
relief gives shelter to a vast amount of fraud, idleness, 
and vice, it is much better that we should sustain, by 
contributions proportioned to our ability, some system 
by which cases of actual need, and such only, can be 
promptly and adequately cared for, and that we then 
— however reluctantly — refuse our alms to appli- 
cants of doubtful merit. 



T 



CHAPTER XIV. 
ANCIENT HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
HE numerous ethical systems that have had 



currency in earlier or later times, may be divided 
into two classes, — the one embracing those which 
make virtue a means ; the other, those which make 
it an end. According to the former, virtue is to be 
practised for the good that will come of it ; according 
to the latter, for its own sake, for its intrinsic excel- 
lence. These classes have obvious subdivisions. The 
former includes both the selfish and the utilitarian 
theory ; while the latter embraces a wide diversity of 
views as to the nature, the standard, and the crite- 
rion of virtue, according as it is believed to consist in 
conformity to the fitness of things, in harmony with 
an unsophisticated taste, in accordance with the inte- 
rior moral sense, or in obedience to the will of God. 
There are, also, border theories, which blend, or rather 
force into juxtaposition, the ideas that underlie the 
two classes respectively. 

It is proposed, in the present chapter, to give an 
outline of the history of ethical philosophy in 
Greece and Rome, or rather, in Greece ; for Rome 
had no philosophy that was not born in Greece. 

Socrates was less a moral philosopher than a 



196 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

preacher of virtue. Self -ordained as a censor and re- 
former, lie directed his invective and irony principally 
against the Sophists, whose chief characteristic as to 
philosophy seems to have been the denial of objective 
truth, and thus, of absolute and determinate right. 
Socrates, in contrast with them, seeks to elicit duty 
from the occasions for its exercise, making his collocu- 
tors define right and obligation from the nature of 
things as presented to their own consciousness and 
reflection. Plato represents him, whenever a moral 
question is under discussion, as probing the very heart 
of the case, and drawing thence the response as from 
a divine oracle. 

Plato held essentially the same ground, as may be 
seen in his identifying the True, the Beautiful, and 
the Good ; but it is impossible to trace in his writings 
the outlines of a definite ethical system, whether his 
own, or one derived from his great master. 

The three principal schools of ethical philoso- 
phy in Greece were the Peripatetic, the Epicurean, 
and the Stoic. 

The Peripatetics derived their philosophy from 
Aristotle, and their name from his habit of walking 
up and down under the plane-trees of the Lyceum. 
According to him, virtue is conduct so conformed to 
human nature as to preserve all its appetites, proclivi- 
ties, desires, and passions, in mutual check and lim- 
itation. It consists in shunning extremes. Thus 
courage stands midway between cowardice and rash- 
ness ; temperance, between excess and self-denial : 



ARISTOTLE'S PERSONAL CHARACTER. 197 

generosity, between prodigality and parsimony ; meek- 
ness, between irascibility and pusillanimity. Happi- 
ness is regarded as the supreme good ; but while this 
is not to be attained without virtue, virtue alone will 
not secure it. Happiness requires, in addition, certain 
outward advantages, such as health, riches, friends, 
wliich therefore a good man will seek by all lawful 
means. Aristotle laid an intense stress on the culti- 
vation of the domestic virtues, justly representing the 
household as the type, no less than the nursery, of 
the state, and the political well-being of the state as 
contingent on the style of character cherished and 
manifested in the home-life of its members. 

There is reason to believe that Aristotle's per- 
sonal character was conformed to his theory of vir- 
tue, — that he pursued the middle path, rather than 
the more arduous route of moral perfection. Though 
much of his time was spent in Athens, he was a native 
of Macedonia, and was for several years resident at 
the court of Philip as tutor to Alexander, with whom 
he retained friendly relations for the greater part of 
his royal pupil's life. Of his connection with the 
Macedonian court and public affairs, there are several 
stories that implicate him dishonorably with political 
intrigues, and though there is not one of these that is 
not denied, and not one which rests on competent his- 
torical authority, such traditions are not apt so to 
cluster as to blur the fair fame of a sturdily incor- 
ruptible man, but are much more likely to cling to 
the memory of a trimmer and a time-server. 



198 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Epicurus, from whom the Epicurean philosophy 
derives its name, was for many years a teacher of 
philosophy in Athens. He was a man of simple, pure, 
chaste, and temperate habits, in his old age bore se- 
vere and protracted sufferings, from complicated and 
incurable disease, with singular equanimity, and had 
his memory posthumously blackened only by those 
who — like theological bigots of more recent times — 
inferred, in despite of all contemporary evidence, that 
he was depraved in character, because they thought 
that his philosophy ought to have made him so. 

He represented pleasure as the supreme good, 
and its pleasure-yielding capacity as the sole criterion 
by which any act or habit is to be judged. On 
this ground, the quest of pleasure becomes the prime, 
or rather the only duty. " Do that you may enjoy," 
is the fundamental maxim of morality. There is no 
intrinsic or permanent distinction between right and 
wrong. Individual experience alone can determine 
the right, which varies according to the differences of 
taste, temperament, or culture. There are, however, 
some pleasures which are more than counterbalanced 
by the pains incurred in procuring them, or by those 
occasioned by them ; and there are, also, pains which 
are the means of pleasures greater than themselves. 
The wise man, therefore, will measure and govern his 
conduct, not by the pleasure of the moment, but with 
reference to the future and ultimate effects of acts, 
habits, and courses of conduct, upon his happiness. 
What are called the virtues, as iustice, temperance, 



PLEASURE ACCORDING TO EPICURUS. 199 

chastity, are in themselves no better than their oppo- 
sites ; but experience has shown that they increase 
the aggregate of pleasure, and diminish the aggregate 
of pain. Therefore, and therefore alone, they are 
duties. The great worth of philosophy consists in its 
enabling men to estimate the relative duration, and 
the permanent consequences, as well as the immediate 
intensity, of every form of pleasure. 

Epicurus specifies two kinds of pleasure, that of 
rest and that of motion. He prefers the former. 
Action has its reaction ; excitement is followed by 
depression ; effort, by weariness ; thought for others 
involves the disturbance of one's own peace. The 
gods, according to Epicurus, lead an easy, untroubled 
life, leave the outward universe to take care of itself, 
are wholly indifferent to human affairs, and are made 
ineffably happy by the entire absence of labor, want, 
and care ; and man becomes most godlike and most 
happy, therefore most virtuous, when he floats through 
life, unharming and unharmed, idle and useless, self- 
contained and self-sufficing, simple in his tastes, mod- 
erate in his requirements, frugal in his habits. 

It may be doubted whether Epicurus denoted by 
pleasure, 1 mere physical pleasure alone. It is cer- 
tain that his later followers regarded the pleasures of 
the body as the only good ; and Cicero says that Epi- 
curus himself referred all the pleasures of the intel- 
lect to the memory of past and the hope of future 
sensual gratification. Yet there is preserved an ex- 



200 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

tract of a letter from Epicurus, in which he says that 
his own bodily pains in his years of decrepitude are 
outweighed by the pleasure derived from the memory 
of his philosophical labors and discoveries. 

Epicureanism numbered among its disciples, 
not only men of approved virtue, but not a few, 
like Pliny the Younger, of a more active type of vir- 
tue than Epicurus would have deemed consistent 
with pleasure. But in lapse of time it became the 
pretext and cover for the grossest sensuality; and 
the associations which the unlearned reader has with 
the name are only strengthened by conversance with 
the literature to which it gave birth. Horace is its 
poet-laureate ; and he was evidently as sincere in his 
philosophy as he was licentious in his life. There is 
a certain charm in good faith and honesty, even when 
on the side of wrong and vice ; and it is his perfect 
frankness, self-complacency, nay, self-praise, in a 
sensuality which in plain prose would seem by turns 
vapid and disgusting, that makes Horace even peril- 
ously fascinating, so that the guardians of the public 
morals may well be thankful that for the young the 
approach to him is warded off by the formidable bar- 
riers of grammar and dictionary. 

While Epicureanism thus generated, on the one 
hand, in men of the world laxity of moral principle 
and habit, on the other hand, in minds of a more 
contemplative cast, it lapsed into atheism. From 
otiose gods, careless of human affairs, the transition 
was natural to a belief in no gods. The universe 



THE STOICS. 201 

which could preserve and govern itself, could certainly 
have sprung into uncaused existence ; for the tenden- 
cies which, without a supervising power, maintain 
order in nature, continuity in change, ever-new life 
evolved from incessant death, must be inherent ten- 
dencies to combination, harmony, and organization, 
and thus may account for the origin of the system 
which they sustain and renew. This type of atheism 
has its most authentic exposition in the " De Rerum 
Natura " of Lucretius. He does not, in so many 
words, deny the being of the gods, — he, indeed, 
speaks of them as leading restful lives, withdrawn 
from all care of mortal affairs ; but he so scoffs at all 
practical recognition of them, and so jeers at the rev- 
erence and awe professed for them by the multitude, 
that we are constrained to regard them as rather the 
imagery of his verse than the objects of his faith. 
He maintains the past eternity of matter, which 
consists of atoms or monads of various forms. These, 
drifting about in space, and impinging upon one an- 
other, by a series of happy chances, fell into orderly 
relations and close-fitting symmetries, whence, in suc- 
cession, and by a necessity inherent in the primitive 
atoms, came organization, life, instinct, love, reason, 
wisdom. This poem has a peculiar value at the 
present day, as closely coincident in its cosmogony 
with one of the most recent phases of physical phi- 
losophy, and showing that what calls itself progress 
may be motion in a circle. 

The Stoics, so called from a portico ] adorned with 



MORAI PHILOSOPHY. 

magnificent paintings by Polygnotus, in which their 
doctrines were first taught, owe their origin to Zeno, 
who lived to a very great age, illustrious for self-con- 
trol, temperance, and the severest type of virtue, and 
at length, in accordance with a favorite dogma and 
practice of his school, when he found that he had be- 
fore him only growing infirmity with no hope of res- 
toration, terminated his life by his own hand. 

According to the Stoic philosophy, virtue is the 
sole end of life, and virtue is the conformity of the 
will and conduct to universal nature. Virtue alone is 
good ; vice alone is evil ; and whatever is neither vir- 
tue nor vice is neither good nor evil in itself, but is 
to be sought or shunned, according as it is auxiliary 
to virtue or conducive to vice, — if neither, to be re- 
garded with utter indifference. Virtue is indivisible. 
It does not admit of degrees. He who only approxi- 
mates to virtue, however closely, is yet to be regarded 
as outside of its pale. Only the wise man can be 
virtuous. He needs no precepts of duty. His intui- 
tions are always to be trusted. His sense of right 
cannot be blinded or misled. As for those who do 
not occupy this high philosophic ground, though they 
cannot be really virtuous, they yet may present some 
show and semblance of virtue, and they may be 
.^ided in this by precepts and ethical instruction. 1 It 

1 The words employed by the Stoics to indicate specific duties, as pre- 
sented to the common understanding, recognize intrinsic fitness as the 
ground of right. These duties are termed in Greek, Katfrfcovra, that is, be- 
fitting, and in Latin, officio,, from ob and facio, that which is done 06 aU- 
quid, for some assignable reason. 



STOICISM IN ROME. 

was for the benefit of those who, on account of their 
lack of true wisdom, needed such direction, and were 
at the same time so well disposed as to receive and 
follow it, that treatises on practical morality were 
written by many of the later Stoics, and that in 
Rome there were teachers of this school who exer- 
cised functions closely analogous to those of the Chris- 
tian preacher and pastor. 

Stoicism found its most congenial soil in the 
stern, hardy integrity and patriotism of those Ro- 
mans, whose incorruptible virtue is the one redeeming 
feature of the declining days of the Republic and the 
effeminacy and coarse depravity of the Empire. Sen- 
eca's ethical writings * are almost Christian, not only 
in their faithful rebuke of every form of wrong, but 
in their tender humanity for the poor, the slaves, the 
victims of oppression, in their universal philanthropy, 
and in their precepts of patience under suffering, 
forbearance, forgiveness, and returning good for evil. 
Epictetus, the deformed slave of a capricious and 

i How far Seneca's character was represented by bis philosophy is, we 
believe, a fairly open question. That the beginning and the close of his 
career were in accordance with his teachings, is certain. That as a cour- 
tier, he was in suspicious proximity to, if not in compiclity with, gross 
scandals and crimes, is equally certain. The evidence against him is 
weighty, but by no means conclusive. He may have lingered in the pur- 
lieus of the palace in fond memory of what Nero had been in the prom- 
ise of his youth, and in the groundless hope of bringing him again undeir 
mere humane influences. This supposition is rendered the more probable 
by the well-known fact, that during his whole court life, and notwith- 
standing his great wealth, Seneca's personal habits were almost those of 
an anchorite. 



204 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

cruel master, beaten and crippled in mere wantonness, 
enfranchised in his latter years, only to be driven into 
exile and to sound the lowest depths of poverty, ex- 
hibited a type of heroic virtue which has hardly been 
equalled, perhaps never transcended by a mere mor- 
tal ; and though looking, as has been already said, to 
annihilation as the goal of life, he maintained a spirit 
so joyous, and has left in his writings so attractive a 
picture of a soul serenely and supremely happy, that 
he has given support and consolation to multitudes of 
the bravest and best disciples of the heaven-born re- 
ligion, which he can have known — if at all — only 
through its slanderers and persecutors. Marcus Au- 
relius, in a kindred spirit, and under the even heavier 
burdens of a tottering empire, domestic dissensions, 
and defeat and disaster abroad, maintained the sever- 
est simplicity and purity of life, appropriated portions 
of his busiest days to devout contemplation, medi- 
tated constantly on death, and disciplined himself to 
regard with contempt alike the praise of flatterers 
and the contingency of posthumous fame. We have, 
especially in Nero's reign, the record of not a few 
men and women of like spirit and character, whose 
lofty and impregnable virtue lacked only loving faith 
and undoubting trust in a fatherly Providence to as- 
similate them to the foremost among the Apostles and 
martyrs of the Christian Church. 

The Sceptical school of philosophy claims in this 
connection a brief notice. Though so identified in 
common speech with the name of a single philosopher. 



THE NEW ACADEMY. 205 

that Pyrrhonism is a synonyme for Scepticism, it was 
much older than Pyrrho, and greatly outnumbered 
his avowed followers. It was held by the teachers of 
this school that objective truth is unattainable. Not 
only do the perceptions and conceptions of different 
persons vary as to every object of knowledge ; but 
the perceptions and conceptions of the same persons 
as to the same object vary at different times. Nay, 
more, at the same time one sense conveys impressions 
which another sense may negative, and not infre- 
quently the reflective faculty negatives all the im- 
pressions derived from the senses, and forms a concep- 
tion entirely unlike that which would have taken 
shape through the organs of sense. The soul that seeks 
to know, is thus in constant agitation. But happiness 
consists in imperturbableness of spirit, that is, in sus- 
pense of judgment ; and as it is our duty to promote 
our own happiness, it is our duty to live without de- 
sire or fear, preference or abhorrence, love or hatred, 
in entire apathy, — a life of which Mohammed's fa- 
bled coffin is the fittest symbol. 

The New Academy, whose philosophy was a hy- 
brid of Platonism and Pyrrhonism, while it denied the 
possibility of ascertaining objective truth, yet taught 
that on all subjects of speculative philosophy proba- 
bility is attainable, and that, if the subject in hand 
be one which admits of being acted upon, it is the 
duty of the moral agent to act in accordance with 
probability, — to pursue the course in behalf of which 
the more and the better reasons can be given. There 



206 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

are moral acts and habits which seem to be in accord- 
ance with reason and the nature of things. We may 
be mistaken in thinking them so ; yet the probability 
that they are so creates a moral obligation in their 
favor. The New Academy professed a hypothetical 
acquiescence in the ethics of the Peripatetic school, 
maintaining, therefore, that the mean between two 
extremes is probably in accordance with right and 
duty, and that virtue is probably man's highest good, 
yet probably not sufficient in itself without the addi- 
tion of exterior advantages. 

Cicero considered himself as belonging to the New 
Academy. His instincts as an advocate, often in- 
duced by professional exigencies to deny what he had 
previously affirmed, made the scepticism of this school 
congenial to him ; while his love of elegant ease and 
luxury and his lack of moral courage were in closer 
harmony with the practical ethics of the Peripatetics 
than with the more rigid system of the Stoics. At 
the same time, his pure moral taste and his sincere 
reverence for the right brought him into sympathy 
with the Stoic school. His " De Officiis " is an ex- 
position of the Stoic system of ethics, though by the 
professed disciple of another philosophy. It is as if 
a Mohammedan, without disclaiming his own religion, 
should undertake an exposition of the ethics of Chris- 
tianity, on the ground that, though Mohammed was 
a genuine prophet, there was, nevertheless, a higher 
and purer morality in the New Testament than in 
the Koran 



CHAPTER XV. 

MODERN HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

170R several centuries after the destruction of 
the Western Empire, philosophy had hardly an 
existence except in its records, and these were pre- 
served chiefly for their parchment, half-effaced, cov- 
ered by what took the place of literature in the (so 
called) Dark Ages, and at length deciphered by such 
minute and wearisome toil as only mediaeval cloisters 
have ever furnished. For a long period, monasteries 
were the only schools, and in these the learned men of 
the day were, either successively or alternately, learn- 
ers and teachers, whence the appellation of School- 
men. The learned men who bear this name were 
fond of casuistry, and discussed imagined and often 
impossible cases with great pains (their readers would 
have greater) ; but, so far as we know, they have left 
no systematic treatises on moral philosophy, and have 
transmitted no system that owes to them its distin- 
guishing features. Yet we find among them a very 
broad division of opinion as to the ground of right. 
The fundamental position of the Stoics, that virtue 
13 conformity to nature, and thus independent of ex- 
press legislation, — not created by law, human or 
divine, but the source and origin of law, — had its 



208 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

champions, strong, but few ; while the Augustinian 
theology, then almost universal, replaced Epicurean- 
ism in its denial of the intrinsic and indelible moral 
qualities of actions. The extreme Augustinians re- 
garded the positive command of God as the sole cause 
and ground of right, so that the very things which 
are forbidden under the severest penalties would 
become virtuous and commendable, if enjoined by 
Divine authority. William of Ockham, one of the 
most illustrious of the English Schoolmen, wrote : "If 
God commanded his creatures to hate himself, the 
hatred of God would be the duty of man." 

The earliest modern theory of morals that pre 
sented striking peculiarities was that of Hobbes 
(A. D. 1588-1679), who was indebted solely to the 
stress of his time, alike for his system and for what- 
ever slender following it may have had. He was from 
childhood a staunch royalist, was shortly after leaving 
the University the tutor of a loyal nobleman, and, 
afterward, of Charles II. during the early years of his 
exile; and the parliamentary and Puritan outrages 
seemed to him to be aimed at all that was august and 
reverend, and adapted to overturn society, revert 
progress, and crush civilization. According to him, 
men are by nature one another's enemies, and can be 
restrained from internecine hostility only by force or 
fear. An instinctive perception of this truth in the 
infancy of society gave rise to monarchical and abso- 
lute forms of government ; for only by thus central- 
izing and massing power, which could be directed 



CUD WORTH. 20^ 

against any disturber of the peace, could the individ- 
ual members of society hold property or life in safety. 
The king thus reigns by right of human necessity, 
and obedience to him and to constituted authorities 
under him is man's whole duty, and the sum of virtue. 
Might creates right. Conscience is but another name 
for the fear of punishment. The intimate connection 
of religion with civil freedom in the English Com- 
monwealth no doubt went far in uprooting in Hobbes 
all religious faith ; and while he did not openly attack 
Christianity, he maintained the duty of entire con- 
formity to the monarch's religion, whatever it might 
be, which is of course tantamount to the denial of 
objective religious truth. 1 

Hobbes may fairly be regarded as the father of 
modern ethical philosophy, — not that he had chil- 
dren after his own likeness ; but his speculations were 
so revolting equally to thinking and to serious men, 
as to arouse inquiry and stimulate mental activity in 
a department previously neglected. 

The gauntlet thus thrown down by Hobbes was 
taken up by Cudworth (a. d. 1617-1688), the most 
learned man of his time, whose " Intellectual System 
of the Universe " is a prodigy of erudition, — a work 

1 Spinoza's ethical system was closely parallel to that of Hobbes. He 
denied the intrinsic difference between right and wrong ; but he re- 
garded aristocracy as the natural order of society. With him, as with 
Hobbes, virtue consists solely in obedience to constituted authority ; and 
so utterly did he ignore a higher law, that he maintained it to be the right 
of a state to abiure a treatv with another state, when its terms ceased to 
"be convenient or profitable. 
14 



210 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

in which his own thought is so blocked up with quota- 
tions, authorities, and masses of recondite lore, that it 
is hardly possible to trace the windings of the river for 
the de*bris of auriferous rocks that obstruct its flow. 
The treatise with which we are concerned is that 
on fc< Eternal and Immutable Morality." In this he 
maintains that the right exists, independently of all 
authority, by the very nature of things, in co-eternity 
with the Supreme Being. So far is he from admit- 
ting the possibility of any dissiliency between the 
Divine will and absolute right, that he turns the ta- 
bles on his opponents, and classes among Atheists 
those of his contemporaries who maintain that God 
can command what is contrary to the intrinsic right ; 
that He has no inclination to the good of his crea- 
tures ; that He can justly doom an innocent being to 
eternal torments ; or that whatever God wills is just 
because He wills it. 

Samuel Clarke (a. D. 1675-1729) followed Cud- 
worth in the same line of thought. He was, it is be- 
lieved, the first writer who employed the term fitness 
as defining the ground of the immutable and eternal 
right, though the idea of fitness necessarily underlies 
every system or theory that assigns to virtue intrinsic 
validity. 

Shaftesbury (A. D. 1671-1713) represents virtue 
as residing, not in the nature or relations of things, 
but in the bearing of actions on the welfare or happi- 
ness of beings other than the actor. Benevolence 
constitutes virtue : and the merit of the action and 



ADAM SMITH. 211 

of the actor is determined by the degree in which par- 
ticular affections are merged in general philanthropy, 
and reference is had, not to individual beneficiaries or 
benefits, but to the whole system of things of which 
the actor forms a part. The affections from which 
such acts spring commend themselves to the moral 
sense, and are of necessity objects of esteem and 
love. But the moral sense takes cognizance of the 
affections only, not of the acts themselves ; and as 
the conventional standard of the desirable and the 
useful varies with race, time, and culture, the acts 
which the affections prompt, and which therefore are 
virtuous, may be in one age or country such as the 
people of another century or land may repudiate with 
loathing. Las Casas, in introducing negro slavery 
into America, with the fervently benevolent purpose 
of relieving the hardships of the feeble and overtasked 
aborigines, performed, according to this theory, a vir- 
tuous act ; but had he once considered the question of 
intrinsic right or natural fitness, a name so worthily 
honored would never have been associated with the 
foulest crime of modern civilization. 

According to Adam Smith (A. D. 1723-1790), 
moral distinctions depend wholly on sympathy. We 
approve in others what corresponds to our own tastet 
and habits ; we disapprove whatever is opposed to 
them. As to our own conduct, " we suppose our- 
selves," he writes, " the spectators of our own behav- 
ior and endeavor to imagine what effect it would in 
this light produce in us." Our sense'of duty is do- 



212 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

rived wholly from our thus putting ourselves in the 
place of others, and inquiring what they would ap- 
prove in us. Conscience, then, is a collective and 
corporate, not an individual faculty. It is created by 
the prevalent opinions of the community. Solitary 
virtue there cannot be ; for without sympathy there 
is no self -approval. By parity of reason, the duty of 
the individual can never transcend the average con- 
science of the community. This theory describes so- 
ciety as it is, not as it ought to be. We are, to a sad 
degree, conventional in our practice, much more so 
than in our beliefs ; but it is the part of true manli- 
ness to have the conscience an interior, not an exter- 
nal organ, to form and actualize notions of right and 
duty for one's self, and to stand and walk alone, if 
need there be, as there manifestly is in not a few crit- 
ical moments, and as there is not infrequently in the 
inward experience of every man who means to do his 
duty. 

Butler (A. D. 1692-1752), in his " Ethical Dis- 
courses," aims mainly and successfully to demonstrate 
the rightful supremacy of conscience. His favorite 
conception is of the human being as himself a house- 
hold [an economy], — the various propensities, appe- 
tites, passions, and affections, the members, — Con- 
science, the head, recognized as such by all, so that 
there is, when her sovereignty is owned, an inward 
repose and satisfaction ; when she is disobeyed, a sense 
of discord and rebellion, of unrest and disturbance. 
This is sound and indisputable, and it cannot be more 



RICHARD PRICE. 213 

clearly stated or more vividly illustrated than by But- 
ler ; but he manifestly regards conscience as legislator 
no less than judge, and thus fails to recognize any 
objective standard of right It is evident that on his 
ground there is no criterion by which honestly erro- 
neous moral judgments can be revised, or by which a 
discrimination can be made between the results of 
education or involuntary prejudice, and the right as 
determined by the nature of things and the standard 
of intrinsic fitness. 

Of all modern ethical writers since the time of 
Cudworth and Clarke, none so much as approaches 
the position occupied by Richard Price (a. d. 1723- 
1791), a London dissenting divine, a warm advocate 
of American independence, and the intimate friend of 
John Adams. He maintained that right and wrong 
are mherent and necessary, immutable and eternal 
characteristics, not dependent on will or command, but 
on the intrinsic nature of the act, and determined with 
unerring accuracy by conscience, whenever the nature 
of the case is clearly known. " Morality," he writes, 
" is fixed on an immovable basis, and appears not to be 
in any sense factitious, or the arbitrary production of 
any power, human or divine ; but equally everlasting 
and necessary with all truth and reason." " Virtue 
is of intrinsic value and of indispensable obligation ; 
not the creature of will, but necessary and immutable ; 
not local and temporary, but of equal extent and an- 
tiquity with the Divine mind ; not dependent on 
power, but the guide of all power." l 

1 Price's theory of morals is developed with singular precision and force 



214 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Paley (A. D. 1743-1805) gives a definition of vir- 
tue, remarkable for its combination of three partial 
theories. Virtue, according to him, is " the doing 
good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, 
and for the sake of everlasting happiness." Of this 
definition it may be said, 1. The doing good to man- 
kind is indeed virtue ; but it is by no means the whole 
of virtue. 2. Obedience to the will of God is our 
duty ; but it is so, because his will must of necessity 
be in accordance with the fitting and right. Could 
we conceive of Omnipotence commanding what is in- 
trinsically unfit and wrong, the virtuous man would 
not be the God-server, but the Prometheus suffering 
the implacable vengeance of an unrighteous Deity. 
3. Though everlasting happiness be the result of vir- 
tue, it is not the ground or the reason for it. Were 
our being earth-limited, virtue would lose none of its 
obligation. Epictetus led as virtuous a life as if 
heaven had been open to his faith and hope. — Pa- 
ley's system may be described in detail as Shaftes- 
bury's, with an external washing of Christianity; 
Shaftesbury having been what was called a free- 
thinker, while Paley was a sincere believer in the 
Christian revelation, and contributed largely and effi- 
ciently to the defence of Christianity and the illus- 
tration of its records. The chief merit of Paley's 
treatise on Moral Philosophy is that it clearly and 
emphatically recognizes the Divine authority of the 

in one of the Baccalaureate Addresses of the late President Appletco, erf 
Bovrdoui College. 



JEREMY BENTHAM. 215 

moral teachings of the New Testament, though in 
expounding them the author too frequently dilutes 
them by considerations of expediency. 

Jeremy Bentham (A. D. 1747-1832) is Paley mi- 
nus Christianity. The greatest good of the greatest 
number is, according to him, the aim and criterion of 
virtue. Moral rules should be constructed with this 
sole end ; and this should be the pervading purpose of 
all legislation. Bentham's works are very volumi- 
nous, and they cover, wisely and well, almost every 
department of domestic, social, public, and national 
life. The worst that can be said of his political writ- 
ings is that they are in advance of the age, — literally 
Utopian ; l but it would be well with the country 
which was prepared to embody his views. But, un- 
fortunately, his principles have no power of self-real- 
ization. They are like a watch, perfect in all other 
parts, but without the mainspring. Bentham contem- 
plates the individual man as an agency, rather than 
as an intellectual and moral integer. He must work 
under yoke and harness for ends vast and remote, 
beyond the appreciation of ordinary mortals ; and he 
must hold all partial affections and nearer aims subor- 
dinate to rules deduced by sages and legislators from 
considerations of general utility. Bentham's influ- 
ence on legislation, especially on criminal law, has 
been beneficially felt on both sides of the Atlantic. 
In the department of pure ethics, there are no essen- 



216 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

tial points of difference between him and other writers 
of the utilitarian school. 1 



In Prance there has been a large preponderance of 
sensualism, expediency, and selfishness in the ethical 
systems that have had the most extensive currency. 
There was a great deal of elaborate ethical specula- 
tion and theory among the French philosophers of the 
last century; but among them we cannot recall a 
single writer who maintained a higher ground than 
Bentham, except that Rousseau — perhaps the most 
immoral of them all — who was an Epicurean so far 
as he had any philosophy, sometimes soars in senti- 
mental rhapsodies about the intrinsic beauty and love- 
liness of a virtue which he knew only by name. 

Malebranche (A. d. 1638-1714), whose principal 
writings belong to the previous century, represents 
entirely opposite views and tendencies. He hardly 
differs from Samuel Clarke, except in phraseology. 
He resolves virtue into love of the universal order, 
and conformity to it in conduct. This order requires 

1 The reader who is conversant with the literature of ethics in England 
and America will miss in this chapter many names which merit a place by 
the side of those that have been given. But within the limits proposed 
for this manual, the alternative was to select a few writers among those 
who have largely influenced the thought of their own and succeeding 
times, and to associate with each of them something that should mark his 
individuality ; or to make the chapter little more than a catalogue of names. 
The former is evidently the more judicious course. Nothing has been said 
of living writers, — not because there are none who deserve an honored 
place among the contributors to this department of science, but because, 
were the list to be once opened, we should hardly know where to close it. 



FfiNELON AND BOSSUET. 217 

that we should prize and love all beings and objects 
in proportion to their relative worth, and that we 
should recognize this relative worth in our rules and 
haoits of life. Thus man is to be more highly valued 
and more assiduously served than the lower animak, 
because worth more ; and God is to be loved infinitely 
more than man, and to be always obeyed and served 
in preference to man, because he is worth immeasura- 
bly more than the beings that derive their existence 
from him. Malebranche ascribes to the Supreme 
Being, not the arbitrary exercise of power in consti- 
tuting the right, but recognition, in his government 
of the world and in his revealed will, of the order, 
which is man's sole law. " Sovereign princes," he 
says, " have no right to use their authority without 
reason. Even God has no such miserable right." 

At nearly the same period commenced the ethical 
controversy between F^nelon (a. D. 1651-1715) and 
Bossuet (A. D. 1627-1704), as to the possibility and 
obligation of disinterested virtue. Fenelon and the 
Quietists, who sympathized with him, maintained 
that the pure love of God, without any self -reference, 
or regard for one's own well-being either here or here- 
after, is the goal and the test of human perfection, 
and that nothing below this — nothing which aims or 
aspires at anything less than this — deserves the 
name of virtue. Bossuet defended the selfish theory 
of virtue, attacked his amiable antagonist with uncon- 
scionable severity and bitterness, and succeeded in 
obtaining from the court of Rome — though against 



218 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the wishes of the Pope — the condemnation of the 
obnoxious tenet. The Pope remarked, with well- 
turned antithesis, that Fenelon might have erred 
from excess in the love of God, while Bossuet had 
sinned by defect in the love of his neighbor. 

Among the recent French moralists, the most dis- 
tinguished names are those of Jouffroy and Cousin, 
who — each with a terminology of his own — agree 
with Malebranche in regarding right and wrong as 
inherent and essential characteristics of actions, and 
as having their source and the ground of their validity 
in the nature of things. The aim of Cousin's well- 
known treatise on " The True, the Beautiful, and the 
Good," is purely ethical, and the work is designed to 
identify the three members of the Platonic triad with 
corresponding attributes of the Infinite Being, — attri- 
butes which, virtually one, have their counterpart* and 
manifestation in the order of nature and the govern- 
ment of the universe. 

In Germany, the necessarian philosophers of the 
Pantheistic school ignore ethics by making choice and 
moral action impossible. Man has no distinct and 
separate personality. He is for a little while detached 
in appearance from the soul of the universe (anima 
mundi), but in reality no more detached from it than 
is a boulder or a log of drift-wood from the surface on 
which it rests. He still remains a part of the uni- 
versal soul, the multiform, all-embracing God, who is 
himself not a self-conscious, freely willing being, but 



TWO CLASSES OF ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 219 

impelled by necessity in all his parts and members, 
and, no less than in all else, in those human members 
through which alone he attains to some fragmentary 
self -consciousness . 

According to Kant, the reason intuitively discerns 
truths that are necessary, absolute, and universal. 
The theoretical reason discerns such truths in the 
realm of ontology, and in the relations and laws that 
underlie all subjects of physical inquiry. In like 
manner, the practical reason intuitively perceives the 
conditions and laws inherent in the objects of moral 
action, — that is, as Malebranche would have said, the 
elements of universal order, or, in the language of 
Clarke, the fitness of things. As the mind must of 
necessity contemplate and cognize objects of thought 
under the categories intuitively discerned by the theo- 
retical reason, so must the will be moved by the con- 
ditions and laws intuitively discerned by the practical 
reason. This intuition is law and obligation. Man 
can obey it, and to obey it is virtue. He can disobey 
it, and in so doing he does not yield to necessity, but 
makes a voluntary choice of wrong and evil. 

It will be perceived from the historical survey in 
this and the previous chapter, that — as was said at 
the outset — all ethical systems resolve them- 
selves into the two classes of which the Epicu- 
reans and the Stoics furnished the pristine types, 
— those which make virtue an accident, a variable, 
subject to authority, occasion, or circumstance ; and 



220 MORAL PHILOSOPHY 

those which endow it with an intrinsic right, immu- 
tableness, validity, and supremacy. On subjects of 
fundamental moment, opinion is of prime importance. 
Conduct results from feeling, and feeling from opin- 
ion. We would have the youth, from the very earliest 
period of his moral agency, grounded in the belief 
that rignt and wrong are immutable, — that they 
have no localities, no meridians, — that, with a change 
of surroundings, their conditions and laws vary as 
little as do those of planetary or stellar motion. Let 
him feel that right and wrong are not the mere dicta 
of human teaching, nay, are not created even by rev- 
elation; but let their immutable distinction express 
itself to his consciousness in those sublime words 
which belong to it, as personified in holy writ, " Je- 
hovah possessed me from the beginning of his way, 
before his works of old. I was set up from everlast- 
ing, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When 
He prepared the heavens, I was there. When He 
appointed the foundations of the earth, then was I by 
Him." This conception of the Divine and everlast- 
ing sacredness of virtue, is a perennial fountain of 
strength. He who has this does not imagine that he 
has power over the Right, can sway it by his choice, 
or vary its standard by his action ; but it overmasters 
him, and, by subduing, frees him, fills and energizes 
his whole being, ennobles all his powers, exalts and 
hallows all his affections, makes him a priest to God, 
and a king among men. 



INDEX. 



FAGS 

Abstinence, when to be preferred to temperanee . .175 

Academy, the New 205 

Action, defined 1 

springs of 10 

governing principles of . . . . SO 

Affections, the 22 

Anger 26 

Anonymous publications 128 

Appetites, the 10 

Aristotle, character of 197 

Beneficence 143 

Bentham, Jeremy 215 

Bossuet, controversy of, with Fenelon . . . .217 
Brotherhood, human, in its ethical relations ... 56 

Butler 212 

Capital punishment 66 

Casuistry 187 

Children, duties of 121 

Christianity, a source of knowledge 55 

exhibiting moral perfection in the person of its Founder 68 

compared, as to its ethics, with other religions . . 59 

as a motive power 81 

Cicero, philosophical relations of 206 

Clarke, Samuel 210 

Conscience, a judicial faculty 41 

educated by use 44 

relation of knowledge to 45 

Contracts .128 



22^ INDEX. 

Courage, defined 158 

physical 159 

moral 160 

Cousin 218 

Cudworth . 209 

Desire, defined ....... 12 

of knowledge . 18 

of society 16 

of esteem 17 

of power 18 

of superiority 19 

Duties, conflict of 190 

Duty, limit of 189 

Enemies, love of, possible • 149 

Envy 27 

Epictetus, character of • 203 

Epicureanism 198 

Example, ethical value of Ill 

Expediency, an insufficient rule of conduct . . .31 

when to be consulted 33 

Extreme cases in morals . . . . ; . .125 

Falsehood 151 

Family, duties of the 118 

Fdnelon, controversy of, with Bossuet . . . . 217 

Fitness, the ground of right 36 

Foreknowledge, Divine, consistent with human freedom 8 

Freedom of the will, arguments for 2 

objections to 4 

Government, the essential function of . . . . 1 80 

obedience to, how limited 182 

when to be opposed 184 

Gratitude 24 

Habit 84 

Hatred 28 

Hobbes ... 208 



INDEX. 223 

Home-life, order requisite in 169 

Homicide, justifiable 64 

Honesty 134 

Horace, the poet of Epicureanism . 200 

Ignorance, sins of 39 

Immortality, ethical relations of 57 

Intemperance 170 

Jouffroy .......... 218 

Justice 118 

Kant, ethical system of 219 

Kindness 25 

Knowledge, attainment of, a duty 102 

Law, the result of experience 50 

an educational force . • • . . . .51 

Liberty, the right to 69 

Love 22 

Lucretius, philosophy of 201 

Malebranche 216 

Manners, a department of morals . . . . . 177 

Marcus Aurelius, character of . . . . . . 204 

Marriage 120 

Measure, duties appertaining to 1 70 

Military service 68 

Moral philosophy, defined ....... 84 

Motive 79 

Oaths . 129 

Observation, a source of ethical knowledge ... 46 

Order 164 

Paley ... 215 

Pantheism, ethics of 218 

Parents, duties of ... ... 121 

Passion .... 82 

Patience .... ... 158 



224 INDEX, 

Pauperism 144 

Peripatetics, the 198 

Piety toward God 118 

Pity 25 

Place, duties appertaining to 168 

Plato, as a teacher of ethics 198 

Politeness 178 

Positive duties 117 

Price, Richard 214 

Promises 126 

Prudence 98 

Punctuality 167 

Resentment 27 

Revenge 28 

Reverence 28 

Revolution, when justifiable 185 

Right, the 85 

absolute and relative 87 

Rights, defined .61 

how limited 62 

personal 64 

of property . 72 

of reputation 76 

Sabbath, the 16 

Sceptical school of philosophy 204 

Schoolmen, ethics of the 207 

Self-control 106 

Self -culture, moral 109 

Self-preservation 99 

Seneca, writings and character of 208 

Shaftesbury 210 

Slavery 70 

Smith, Adam 211 

Socrates, as a teacher of ethics 195 

Speculation in business, when legitimate .... 138 

when dishonest 140 

Spinoza . 209 

Stoics, philosophy of the 201 

eminent Roman 203 






INDEX. 225 

Submission 155 

Sympathy . . 25 

Taxation 75 

Temperance 178 

Time, duties appertaining to . . . . . 165 

Usury 142 

Veracity 122 

Virtue, defined 88 

connection of, with piety .... 91 

Virtues, the 94 

cardinal 96 

Worship, public 115 

Zeno, character of 202 

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The work includes a full statement and clear exposition 
of the coordinate branches of the study — physiological and 
introspective psychology. The physical basis of Psychol- 
ogy is fully recognized. Special attention is given to 
the cultivation of the mental faculties, making the work 
practically useful for self-improvement. The treatment 
throughout is singularly clear and plain and in harmony 
with its aims and purpose. 

" Halleck's Psychology pleases me very much. It is short, clear, 
interesting, and full of common sense and originality of illustration. 
I can sincerely recommend it." 

WILLIAM JAMES, 
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University. 



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Important Pedagogical Works 

By RURIC N. ROARK 
Dean of the Department of Pedagogy, Kentucky State College 



ROARK'S PSYCHOLOGY IN EDUCATION 

Cloth, 12mo, 312 pages ..... Price $1.00 

This new work is designed for use as a text-book in 
Secondary and Normal Schools, Teachers' Training Classes, 
and Reading Circles. The general purpose of the book is 
to give teachers a logical and scientific basis for their daily 
work in the schoolroom. It makes a distinct departure 
from the methods heretofore in vogue in the treatment of 
Psychology, and is justly regarded as the most important 
contribution to pedagogical science and literature in 
recent years. 

ROARK'S METHOD IN EDUCATION 

Cloth, 12mo, 349 pages Price $1.00 

The second book of Roark's Pedagogical Series is 
designed for Normal Schools, Teachers' Reading Circles, 
and for private reading by every teacher who seeks a key 
to the solution of the problems that present themselves in 
the schoolroom. By its practical application and illustra- 
tion of sound pedagogical principles, it presents a working 
manual of great helpfulness to all teachers, both to the 
experienced and the inexperienced. 



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on receipt of the price. 

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<»99) 



Seeley's History of Education 

By Dr. LEVI SEELEY 
Professor of Pedagogy, State Normal School, Trenton, N. J. 

Cloth, 12mo, 350 pages. Price, $1.25 

Nearly 400,000 active teachers in the United States 
are required to pass an examination in the History of 
Education. Normal schools, and colleges with pedagog- 
ical departments lay particular stress upon this subject 
and the Superintendents of Education in most states, 
counties, and cities, now expect their teachers to possess 
a knowledge of it. 

This book is not based on theory, but is the practical 
outgrowth of Dr. Seeley's own class-work after years of 
trial. It is therefore a working book, plain, comprehen- 
sive, accurate, and sufficient in itself to furnish all the 
material on the subject required by any examining board, 
or that may be demanded in a normal or college course. 

It arranges the material in such a manner as to appeal 
to the student and assist him to grasp and remember 
the subject. 

It gives a concise summary of each system discussed, 
pointing out the most important lessons. 

It lays stress upon the development of education, 
showing the steps of progress from one period to another. 

It begins the study of each educational system or 
period with an examination of the environment of the 
people, their history geography, home conditions, etc. 

It gives a biographical sketch of the leading educators, 
and their systems of pedagogy, including those of Horace 
Mann and Herbart. 

It treats of the systems of education of Germany, 
France, England, and the United States, — bringing the 
study of education down to the present time. 

It furnishes the literature of each subject and gives an 
extensive general bibliography for reference. 



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For Teachers and School Officers 



KING'S SCHOOL INTERESTS AND DUTIES 

Developed from " Page's Mutual Duties of Parents and Teachers," 
from various Public Records and Documents, and from the Bulletins 
of the National Bureau of Education. By Robert M. King. 

Cloth, 12mo, 336 pages $1.00 

This new work, original in its scope and plan, presents in one 
volume interesting and valuable expositions of the modern demands, 
best methods, and most important interests of our Public School 
Systems. Its central idea is to show the importance and value of 
co-operation in school work and the mutual duties of teachers, school 
officers, and parents. It also embodies synopses of the discussions on 
leading educational topics from the various fugitive reports and manuals 
issued, from time to time, by school officials and State Departments of 
Education. It will be found an invaluable manual and guide for 
school superintendents, officers, and patrons, and, indeed, for every one 
interested in educational work. 

MANN'S SCHOOL RECREATIONS AND AMUSEMENTS 

By Charles W. Mann, A.M., Dean of the Chicago Academy. 

Cloth, 12mo, 352 pages $1.00 

This volume not only opens up a new field of much needed informa- 
tion and direction in the matter of physical training of pupils, but also 
furnishes suggestions for intellectual recreations which will greatly add 
to the interest and value of school work and lend a charm to school life 
in all its phases. Some of the subjects treated in this work are: Morning 
Exercises, Care and Equipment of Schoolrooms, Singing Games and 
Songs, Indoor Exercises and Outdoor Games, Experiments in Physics 
and Chemistry, Recreations in Latin, Outline for Reading Circles, etc. 



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Harkness's New Latin Grammars 



A COMPLETE LATIN GRAMMAR 

Cloth-leather binding. i2mo, 464 pages . . . . $1.25 

A SHORT LATIN GRAMMAR 

Cloth-leather binding. i2mo, 254 pages .... .80 

By Albert Harkness, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor Emeritus in 
Brown University. 

These new text-books are the crowning triumph of a life-work which 
has made the name of their author familiar to classical scholars and 
teachers everywhere. They represent the latest advances in philological 
science, and embody the results of the author's large experience in 
teaching and of his own linguistic studies, together with the suggestions 
and advice of eminent German specialists in the field of Historical and 
Comparative Grammar. The peculiar qualities of simplicity, clearness, 
and adaptation of treatment to the practical needs of the student and of 
the class room, — qualities that have always characterized the Harkness 
Grammars, — have been preserved and even intensified in these new books. 

The Complete Latin Grammar is designed at once as a text-book 
for the class room and a book of reference for the student. It aims not 
only to present systematically for the benefit of the beginner the lead- 
ing facts and laws of the Latin language, but also to provide accurately 
for the needs of the advanced student. 

The Short Latin Grammar is published for the benefit of those who 
prefer to begin with a more elementary manual, or those who do not 
contemplate a collegiate course. In the preparation of this work the 
convenience and interest of the student have been carefully consulted. 
The paradigms, rules, and discussions have in general been introduced 
in the exact form and language of the Complete Latin Grammar by 
which it may at any time be supplemented. The numbering of the 
sections in the two books is also alike. 



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A History of English Literature 

By REUBEN POST HALLECK, M.A. (Yale) 
Cloth, 12mo, 499 pages. With numerous illustrations. Price $1.25. 



Halleck's History of English Literature is a concise and interesting 
text-book of the history and development of English literature from the 
earliest times to the present. While this work is sufficiently simple to 
be readily comprehended by high school students, the treatment is not 
only philosophic, but also stimulating and suggestive, and will naturally 
lead to original thinking. 

The book is a history of literature and not a mere collection of bio- 
graphical sketches. Only enough of the facts of an author's life are 
given to make students interested in him as a personality, and to show 
how his environment affected his work. The author's productions, their 
relation to the age, and the reasons why they hold a position in literature, 
receive treatment commensurate with their importance. 

One of the most striking features of the work consists in the way in 
which literary movements are clearly outlined at the beginning of each of 
the chapters. Special attention is given to the essential qualities which 
differentiate one period from another, and to the animating spirit of each 
age. The author shows that each period has contributed something 
definite to the literature of England, either in laying characteristic foun- 
dations, in presenting new ideals, in improving literary form, or in 
widening the circle of human thought. 

At the end of each chapter a carefully prepared list of books is given 
to direct the student in studying the original works of the authors 
treated. He is told not only what to read, but also where to find it at 
the least cost. 

The book contains as a frontispiece a Literary Map of England in 
colors, showing the counties, the birthplaces, the homes, and the haunts 
of the chief authors, specially prepared for this work. 



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American Book Company 

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An Introduction to the 

Study of American Literature 

By BRANDER MATTHEWS 
Professor of Literature in Columbia University 

Cloth, 12mo, 256 pages . . . Price, $1.00 






A text-book of literature on an original plan, and conforming 
with the best methods of teaching. 

Admirably designed to guide, to supplement, and to stimulate 
the student's reading of American authors. 

Illustrated with a fine collection of facsimile manuscripts, portraits 
of authors, and views of their homes and birthplaces. 

Bright, clear, and fascinating, it is itself a literary work of high 
rank. 

The book consists mostly of delightfully readable and yet 
comprehensive little biographies of the fifteen greatest and most 
representative American writers. Each of the sketches contains a 
critical estimate of the author and his works, which is the more 
valuable, coming, as it does, from one who is himself a master. The 
work is rounded out by four general chapters which take up other 
prominent authors and discuss the history and conditions of our 
literature as a whole ; and there is at the end of the book a complete 
chronology of the best American literature from the beginning down 
to 1896. 

Each of the fifteen biographical sketches is illustrated by a fine 
portrait of its subject and views of his birthplace or residence and in 
some cases of both. They are also accompanied by each author's 
facsimile manuscript covering one or two pages. The book contains 
excellent portraits of many other authors famous in American 
literature. 



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American Literature will be sent prepaid to any address, on receipt of 
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(S. S. 9 i) 



JUL 20 1901 



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